Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Airflows Inside Passenger Cars And Implications For Airborne Disease Transmission, Varghese Mathai, Asimanshu Das, Jeffery A. Bailey, Kenneth Breuer

Physics Department Faculty Publication Series

Transmission of highly infectious respiratory diseases, including SARS-CoV-2, is facilitated by the transport of exhaled droplets and aerosols that can remain suspended in air for extended periods of time. A passenger car cabin represents one such situation with an elevated risk of pathogen transmission. Here, we present results from numerical simulations to assess how the in-cabin microclimate of a car can potentially spread pathogenic species between occupants for a variety of open and closed window configurations. We estimate relative concentrations and residence times of a noninteracting, passive scalar-a proxy for infectious particles-being advected and diffused by turbulent airflows inside the …