01835824

Component

https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981221074643

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has led to a nearly world-wide shelter-in-place strategy. This raises several natural concerns about the safe relaxing of current restrictions. This article focuses on the design and operation of heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in the context of transportation. Do HVAC systems have a role in limiting viral spread? During shelter-in-place, can the HVAC system in a dwelling or a vehicle help limit spread of the virus? After the shelter-in-place strategy ends, can typical workplace and transportation HVAC systems limit spread of the virus? This article directly addresses these and other questions. In addition, it also summarizes simplifying assumptions needed to make meaningful predictions. This article derives new results using transform methods first given in Ginsberg and Bui. These new results describe viral spread through an HVAC system and estimate the aggregate dose of virus inhaled by an uninfected building or vehicle occupant when an infected occupant is present within the same building or vehicle. Central to these results is the derivation of a quantity called the “protection factor”—a term-of-art borrowed from the design of gas masks. Older results that rely on numerical approximations to these differential equations have long been lab validated. This article gives the exact solutions in fixed infrastructure for the first time. These solutions, therefore, retain the same lab validation of the older methods of approximation. Further, these exact solutions yield valuable insights into HVAC systems used in transportation.

Mark D. Ginsberg https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3383-5509© National Academy of Sciences: Transportation Research Board 2022.

English

0000-0003-3383-5509

pp 396-407

2023-4

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Web

References (19)

Air conditioning systems; Cooling; COVID-19; Heating (Vehicles); Heating, cooling and ventilation equipment; Risk management; Vehicle interiors; Ventilation systems

Passenger Transportation; Safety and Human Factors; Security and Emergencies; Vehicles and Equipment

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 7 2022 3:14PM