Measurement of particle deposition rates in a commercial aircraft cabin

Abstract

Thousands of people travel by air every day. In 2011, 730 million people traveled on commercial aircraft domestically (BTS 2012). These passengers are confined to a very high-occupant density space for extended periods of time, sometimes over 15 h or more, for international flights. This large volume of travelers, combined with their time spent in close proximity of each other, during flights increases the potential for transmitting diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), tuberculosis, swine influenza (H1N1), and avian influenza (H5N1). Consequently, a common concern during commercial flight is disease transfer among passengers. Airborne pathogens travel throughout aircraft cabins much as airborne particles would. To study how these airborne diseases travel, particles were released into a Boeing 767 aircraft cabin mockup, and the particle deposition rates over a variety of locations were measured. In addition to varying the location of measurements, the surface orientation for measurements was changed between horizontal and vertical configurations. The number of particles that deposited onto a clear tape for each location was optically counted using a photographic type microscope. The microscope limited the particle detection size to particles with diameters greater than 3.0 μm. The particle deposition measurements were then compared to previous air concentration measurements taken in the same mockup aircraft cabin. It was found that the surface orientation played a significant role in particle deposition. Nearly a factor of ten differences in particle counts was observed between the vertical and horizontal surface orientations. In addition, the deposition trend in the mockup cabin, left to right for horizontal orientation, reversed when the surface orientation was changed.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Aerospace Medicine through the National Air Transportation Center of Excellence for Research in the Intermodal Transport Environment under Cooperative Agreement 07-RITE-KSU. Although the FAA has sponsored this project, it neither endorses nor rejects the findings of the research. The presentation of this information is in the interest of invoking technical community comment on the results and conclusions of this research.