Health and Environmental Simulation

Air Force personnel maintaining or servicing aircraft can be exposed to hazardous concentrations of air contaminants, even if removed some distance from the emission-generating activities. Traditional industrial hygiene measurements can be costly or impractical, and common air pollutant dispersion models are not designed to estimate contaminant concentrations close to their point of origin. Improved simulation tools would benefit the industrial hygiene field. Seizing this opportunity, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), a sophisticated modeling tool now capable of simulating environmental flows, will be applied to predict contaminant concentrations within the vicinity of a release (including distances as close as 2-25 feet that cannot be considered by existing models). Case studies will be developed and validated in conjunction with contaminant measurements collected by the Air Force in the vicinity of aircraft maintenance activities. Phase I research will primarily focus on predicting contaminant dispersion. Conceptual approaches will also be developed to conduct exposure and risk assessment to support decision analysis. Phase II research will implement the methods and frameworks developed in Phase I within user-friendly health and environmental simulation software for use by the Air Force and others tasked with evaluating, assessing, and mitigating chemical exposure in the workplace.