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Topic Name: Sensors to locate passengers releasing pathogens inside airline cabins.
Category: Bioelectronics
Research persons: Qingyan (Yan) Chen, Ph.D.
Location: 585 Purdue Mall, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2088,, United States
Details
Researchers developing a system that uses
mathematical models and sensors to locate passengers releasing hazardous
materials or pathogens inside airline cabins have shown that the technique can
track a substance to an area the size of a single seat.The technique might
enable officials to identify passengers responsible for the unintentional
release of germs, such as contagious viruses, or the intentional release of
pathogens or chemical agents in a terrorist attack, said Qingyan (pronounced
Chin-Yan) Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.
"The goal is to be able to track
the source if a person released a biological agent, such as anthrax, or
inadvertently released a pathogen such as pandemic flu by sneezing, for
example," he said.
The research is supported by the Air
Transportation Center of Excellence for Airline Cabin Environment Research,
established by the Federal Aviation Administration. The work aims to improve air
quality and safety inside airline cabins.
The inadvertent release of infectious
pathogens inside an aircraft is especially dangerous during lengthy
international flights, said Chen, who is a principal director of the center. The
effort involves an interdisciplinary team of Purdue researchers from chemical
and mechanical engineering, physics and chemistry.
The center's Purdue-related research
focuses on developing mathematical models for software that will be needed to
operate such a tracking system and learning how to precisely place several
sensors to accurately trace hazardous airborne materials back to the source.
Research findings are detailed in a
paper being published in June in Indoor Air - International Journal of Indoor
Environment and Health. The paper was written by Chen and mechanical engineering
doctoral student Tengfei Zhang.
The technique, called "inverse
simulation," analyzes how a material disperses throughout the cabin and
then runs the dispersion in reverse to find its origin. Sensors track the
airflow pattern and collect data related to factors such as temperature,
velocity and concentration of gases and particles in the air.
"This is difficult to do, in part
because an airline cabin is a pretty large area," Chen said. "The
procedure now requires several days of computing time to complete the track,
meaning the method could be used only after a contamination occurs."
Chen has recreated a commercial
airliner's passenger compartment, complete with rows of seating, at Purdue's Ray
W. Herrick Laboratories. Data from experiments in the lab are used to validate
results from the computational models. The lab is equipped with three sensors
and recreates the exhalation and body heat of passengers and an airliner's
"linear diffuser" environmental control system, which supplies fresh
and recirculated air for passengers. Boxy devices located on several seats
reproduce body heat, and each has a tube that expels a gas to simulate
passengers exhaling. Recreating body heat is important because it affects
airflow inside airliners, Chen said.
Future work will concentrate on
speeding the computation time, with a goal of one day creating a system that
alerts pilots in real time and pinpoints a contaminant's source.
"We need to find a way to enhance
the computing speed, and we have a strategy to do that," Chen said.
The method is most accurate when three
sensors are used to track a material. Using three sensors, the Purdue
researchers showed that the method could track a substance to within about two
feet of its origin in an airline cabin.
"We would be able to tell you the
general area of the origin, and from that you could figure out which passenger
seats were in this area," said Chen, whose research is based at Herrick
Laboratories.
The same principle could be applied to
systems designed for other environments, such as office buildings, he said.
The Air Transportation Center of
Excellence for Airline Cabin Environment Research includes Auburn University,
Harvard University, Boise State University, Kansas State University, the
University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey. Auburn is the center's lead administrative university,
while Purdue and Harvard are co-technical leaders.
Research through the center aims to:
Understand and mitigate environmental
health issues on airplanes, including contamination of cabin air with engine oil
or hydraulic fluid.
* Study how cabin pressure affects
passengers, especially those with cardiopulmonary
conditions, as well as flight attendants and pilots who work in the
environment daily.
* See how elevated ozone levels at
higher altitudes affect the cabin environment.
* Look at the basic science of how
contaminants travel through the cabin.
* Learn which sensors best detect
certain materials in cabin air.
* Discover the best strategies to
decontaminate an airplane.
Purdue's team is concentrating on
tracking and decontaminating airborne agents.
About Researchers:
Qingyan (Yan) Chen, Ph.D.
Principal Director, Air Transportation Center of
Excellence for Airliner Cabin Environment Research
Editor-in-Chief, Building and Environment,
and
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Ray W. Herrick Laboratories
School of Mechanical Engineering
Purdue University
585 Purdue Mall, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2088, U.S.A.
Phone: (765) 496-7562, FAX: (765) 494-0539
Email: yanchen@purdue.edu, http://meweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~yanchen
Funded :
The research is funded primarily by the
Federal Aviation Administration. The center is
sponsored by the FAA's
Office of Aerospace Medicine.
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