Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to participate and contribute to the 2024 International CFD Challenge on the long-range indoor dispersion of pathogen-laden aerosols. The objective of this challenge is to assess the ability of RANS and/or LES to reproduce both the hydrodynamics of the turbulent natural convection and the dispersion of aerosol clouds in a room-sized enclosure. The impact of turbulence modelling will be determined by comparing selected transport metrics to existing DNS results. Further information about the Challenge can be found at

http://ecommfit.urv.es/challenge/ANNOUNCEMENT.pdf

This new Challenge is the natural continuation of the previous 2022 CFD Challenge on Violent Expiratory Events. The results of this previous successful Challenge can be found in this reference, https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0143795

The important dates are:

October 2, 2023: Challenge Announcement.

October 16, 2023: Challenge starts.

May 1, 2024: Deadline for results submission.

June 2024: Virtual workshop. All teams are expected to participate, present and discuss their results and conclusions.

Fall 2024: Paper submission. The outcomes of the challenge will be presented in a single paper led by the organizers and co-authored by all participants.

The Challenge is open to all the CFD community so feel free to share this announcement with your colleagues.

We hope that this exercise will contribute to a better understanding of the performance of the typically used turbulent transport models and parameterizations for the prediction of the long-term indoor dispersion of pathogen laden aerosols generated in violent expiratory events.

Should you have questions or need additional information, do not hesitate to contact us by email at jordi.pallares@urv.cat

Best regards,

The organizing committee

Jordi Pallares, Alex Fabregat, Salvatore Cito and Cristian Marchioli*

Dept. of Mechanical Engineering. Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Tarragona. Spain

*Dept. of Engineering and Architecture. University of Udine. Udine. Italy