Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
HEAT TRANSFER RESEARCH, cilt.53, sa.11, ss.17-29, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
The coronavirus pandemic has spread all over the world and has greatly affected societies. During the pandemic, closed environments have become a major risk factor. As a result of many studies, it is understood that the small indoor space and insufficient ventilation create a favorable environment for the spread of the virus. In this study, the dispersion of droplets formed due to the sneezing of a person who does not wear a mask, in elevator cabins for 4, 5, 6, and 8 people, which are widely used in apartment buildings, is examined numerically. Different elevator cabins are modeled and divided into finite volumes. SARS-CoV-2 virus information was obtained from the academic literature and used as boundary conditions in droplet modeling. Evaporation of the droplets was also taken into account in the numerical modeling. The natural convection heat transfer mechanism is considered between the cabin walls and the thermal manikin surface. Then, conservation equations in finite volumes were solved by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. According to the results, droplets adhered to a surface or evaporated within 8 s in all elevators. The structure of the droplet jet varied according to the cabin size, and as a result, it was understood that the elevator size had a significant effect on the droplet density adhered to the surfaces.