Impact of Sneezed and Coughed Droplets Produced from a Moving Passenger on Other Passengers inside Aircraft Cabins

摘要

Transmission of respiratory infectious airborne diseases, such as influenza, H1N1, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and COVID-19 inside any closed environment like the aircraft cabins has always been a topic to be studied, because the respiratory droplets produced when a passenger with a certain infections talks coughs or sneezes have harmful effects on other occupants. They have the ability to take flight and hang in the surrounding air or land on passengers or surfaces in short time. This work presents the results of a study of airflow behavior of coughing and sneezing droplets that are produced from a moving passenger in wide-body aircraft cabin section at different velocity rates. In addition, it compared between transmission of different flow rates and velocities in order to show how can these diseases transported from a moving and standing passenger to other passengers. This numerical simulation used computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling simulation. The results showed that the airflow of coughing and sneezing droplets produced from the moving passengers could reach seated passengers; however, sneezed droplets had more harmful impacts than coughed droplets, also both travelled for a long distance inside the cabin. In addition, when comparing the droplets spread range resulting from the moving passenger and stand-still one, it was found that the quicker the passenger moves, the further the droplets spread.