TY - JOUR
T1 - Effectiveness of RANS in predicting indoor airborne viral transmission: A critical evaluation against LES
AU - Choudhary, K.
AU - Krishnaprasad, K.A.
AU - Pandey, S.
AU - Zgheib, N.
AU - Salinas, J.S.
AU - Ha, M.Y.
AU - Balachandar, S.
N1 - Funding Information:
We gratefully acknowledge support from NSF, USA (EAGER Grant no. 2134083 ), LG Electronics, Korea (Grant no. C2021017165 ) and University of Florida Informatics Institute, USA .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2023/4/30
Y1 - 2023/4/30
N2 - We investigate the dispersal of droplet nuclei inside a canonical room of size 10×10×3.2m
3 with a four-way cassette air-conditioning unit placed at the center of the ceiling. We use Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulations with three flow rates corresponding to air changes per hour (ACH) values of 2.5, 5, and 10. The room setup as well as the operating conditions are chosen to match those of a recent high-fidelity large eddy simulation (LES) study. We use statistical overloading with a total of one million droplet nuclei being initially distributed randomly with uniform probability within the room. Six nuclei sizes are considered ranging in radius from 0.1 to 10μm (166,667 nuclei per size). The simulations are one-way coupled and employ the Langevin equations to model sub-grid motion. The flow and particle statistics are compared against the reference LES simulations, and we find that the RANS k−ɛ realizable model may be used as a computationally cheaper alternative to LES for predicting pathogen concentration in confined spaces albeit, with potentially increased statistical discrepancy.
AB - We investigate the dispersal of droplet nuclei inside a canonical room of size 10×10×3.2m
3 with a four-way cassette air-conditioning unit placed at the center of the ceiling. We use Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulations with three flow rates corresponding to air changes per hour (ACH) values of 2.5, 5, and 10. The room setup as well as the operating conditions are chosen to match those of a recent high-fidelity large eddy simulation (LES) study. We use statistical overloading with a total of one million droplet nuclei being initially distributed randomly with uniform probability within the room. Six nuclei sizes are considered ranging in radius from 0.1 to 10μm (166,667 nuclei per size). The simulations are one-way coupled and employ the Langevin equations to model sub-grid motion. The flow and particle statistics are compared against the reference LES simulations, and we find that the RANS k−ɛ realizable model may be used as a computationally cheaper alternative to LES for predicting pathogen concentration in confined spaces albeit, with potentially increased statistical discrepancy.
KW - Correction to well-mixed model
KW - Covid-19
KW - Indoor air quality
KW - Indoor airborne transmission
KW - Large eddy simulation (LES)
KW - RANS simulation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85149810766&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.compfluid.2023.105845
DO - 10.1016/j.compfluid.2023.105845
M3 - Article
SN - 0045-7930
VL - 256
JO - Computers and Fluids
JF - Computers and Fluids
M1 - 105845
ER -