Contaminant transport in a hospital corridor using a water-bath model

A water-bath model was constructed to simulate the influence human movement has on the spread of an airborne contaminant in a corridor. In this paper we assess the suitability of the model by qualitative evaluation of experimental images and assessing the accuracy of the image analysis method used by monitoring the amount of dye observable in the images. Results show the potential for human movement to disperse a contaminant. The approach has been shown to have an accuracy in which less than 3% variation about the mean amount of dye is observed. With this level of accuracy the method is deemed suitable for quantitative analysis. Further work is ongoing to analyse how the contaminant moves over time for a range of conditions.