Background:
In the context of containing the spread of the coronavirus, room cleaners are increasingly being used to reduce the viral load in rooms. However, it is unclear where the cleaner should best be placed in a particular room to achieve the best cleaning result.
Targets:
For a given room situation, the various positions in the room must be evaluated. This should be used to determine which positions should be favoured or avoided.
Challenges:
To assess a room situation, a large number of individual simulations with different cleaning positions are required. If different rooms are also to be analysed, an efficient calculation can only be achieved by automating the simulation processes.
Solution approach:
- Automated implementation of the current calculation case: Combination of a given room situation with the respective position of the cleaner and meshing of the model with OpenFOAM functionality (snappyHexMesh).
- Solution of the calculation case in two steps: A stationary flow simulation to calculate the room flow and a subsequent adapted scalar transport to calculate the clean air distributed by the purifier.
- Evaluation of the cleaning performance based on the proportion of clean air after a specified time.
Evaluation of the different installation positions:
Red and orange: Poor positions
Green: Good positions with good cleaning effect
Digital Tool: Air purifier installation site
