After the COVID-19 pandemic had began to die down, UCSD began an initiative known as Return-to-Learn. This program sought to make changes to the classroom environment by changing various regulations and characteristics of the campus in order to prevent the spread of the virus as students began to return to in-person classes. One new policy of Return-to-Learn was changing how ventilation works in classrooms. HVAC systems were now set to intake from and exhaust to outside air, rather than a central building AC.

Myself and my two teammates, Anthony Luu and Tien Nguyen, took a computational fluid dynamics approach to observing how effective this new HVAC system is in preventing the spread of a virus in smaller classrooms. The one chosen is in the Powell-Focht Bioengineering hall, which has one inlet and one outlet. We conducted three steady-state analyses using a coarse, medium, and fine mesh, and one transient analysis with a simulated “sneeze” occurring within the room.