Source Term Model for Fine Particle Resuspension from Indoor Surfaces(1001-033)

Airborne chemical and biological (CB) agents released in one section of a building travel via the building’s heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and disperse throughout the building, while undergoing deposition and resuspension recurrently. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been employed to simulate dispersion of CB agents in a building through HVAC systems. How well the simulation result would match the actual dispersion profile of CB agents depends on the accuracies of models describing the physical phenomena such as aerodynamic characteristics of CB agents and fluid motions through HVAC systems. One of the important, but not well established, factors is the resuspension mechanism of fine particles. Currently, resuspension models used are simple and, especially, not adequate for describing short-term resuspension which is important in indoor environments. Triton Systems, Inc. proposes to develop a model that characterizes indoor resuspension appropriately to be used in conjunction with CFD simulation for the CB agent dispersion in a building.