Growing concerns over the safety of the indoor environment have made the use of sensors ubiquitous. Sensors that detect chemical and biological warfare agents can offer early warning of dangerous contaminants. However, current sensor system design is more informed by intuition and experience rather by systematic design. To develop a sensor system design methodology, a proper indoor airflow modeling approach is needed. Various indoor airflow modeling techniques, from complicated computational fluid dynamics approaches to simplified multi-zone approaches, exist in the literature. In this study, the effects of two airflow modeling techniques, multi-zone modeling technique and zonal modeling technique, on indoor air protection sensor system design are discussed. Common building attack scenarios, using a typical CBW agent, are simulated. Both multi-zone and zonal models are used to predict airflows and contaminant dispersion. Genetic Algorithm is then applied to optimize the sensor location and quantity. Differences in the sensor system design resulting from the two airflow models are discussed for a typical office environment and a large hall environment.

Date Published: 10 April 2007
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 6529, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2007, 652911 (10 April 2007);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6529:
Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2007
Masayoshi Tomizuka; Chung-Bang Yun; Victor Giurgiutiu, Editor(s)