A practical concurrent gasper-operation strategy for controlling airborne disease transmission in an economy-class aircraft cabin with personalized displacement ventilation

Abstract

Airborne disease transmission in aircraft cabins is closely influenced by airflow patterns. Gaspers, commonly used by passengers, play a critical role in shaping the local airflow. Our previous study investigated the working mechanism of an individual gasper and found that adjusting a receptor's gasper appropriately could effectively protect the receptor. However, in practice, multiple gaspers are operated simultaneously by passengers, and their interaction with the main airflow significantly complicates the contaminant transport in the cabin. Therefore, this study aims to identify an executable gasper operation strategy for passengers to control the transmission of airborne diseases. We first proposed a seat-type-dependent gasper operation strategy based on the working mechanism of a single gasper from our previous study. Random gasper operation under realistic conditions was innovatively used as the benchmark. The two operation strategies were then applied in a seven-row section of a single-aisle, fully occupied, economy-class aircraft cabin with a personalized displacement ventilation system for numerical simulations. The results showed that when the source passenger was in the window seat or middle seat, the proposed operation strategy with full utilization reduced the mean exposure index by at least 25.4 % for most passengers, except those seated directly in front of the source passenger. When the source passenger was in the aisle seat, there was no significant difference between the proposed strategy and random operation in controlling the transmission. These findings provide practical guidance for gasper operation in aircraft cabins to mitigate airborne transmission risks.