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2021 (English) Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en] Contaminated agents in hospital wards are the source of nosocomial infections known as hospital-acquired infection (HAI) or healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Ventilation plays an essential role in the spreading and minimizing the transport of airborne infectious diseases such as Covid-19 and SARS in the hospital ward. The goal of this study is to explore elimination strategies for an efficient removal of contaminated agents, targeting the influence of using local air diffuser and exhaust. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique was used to model the airflow field and contamination distribution in the ward environment. Simulated results showed that the bacteria spread from a patient confined to his bed was limited and under certain conditions significantly eliminated. Consequently, a relatively high efficiency of particle removal and a moderated transmission were obtained. Thus, this strategy is able to shorten the exposure time of patient and healthcare staff, as a result, mitigating cross-infection risk at the hospital.
Keywords Ventilation system, Computational fluid dynamics, cross-infection risk
National Category
Other Civil Engineering
Research subject
Civil and Architectural Engineering, Fluid and Climate Theory
Identifiers urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-300105 (URN)
Conference Healthy Buildings 2021 - Europe, June 21- 23, 2021, Oslo, Norway
Note QC 20210928
2021-08-242021-08-242022-06-25 Bibliographically approved