EFFECTIVENESS OF PHYSICAL DISTANCING IN A MOSQUE DURING CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER USING CFD SIMULATION APPROACH

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of physical distancing in a mosque during congregational prayer using the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation approach. A three-dimensional (3D) model of a mosque, prayer, and assailant was designed using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. Then, a simulation is run using CFD software to simulate the pathogen transmission during the congregation prayer. The simulation is run with the fix of air movement, temperature, and humidity at variable distances, as distancing is the main focus of the study. This is to avoid other factors affecting the results of this study, as what matters the most is the distance among the prayers. The mesh sensitivity study has been done to get a good simulation result that is close to the real world using the numerical computational method. A correct turbulent model is then chosen, and the simulation data obtained were pre validated by the previous literature study. The simulations showed that the pathogen tends to move to the front right side of the mosque. Particles deposition showed that prayer at the front of the assailant received the most percentage of the particles deposition which is the highest 1.3% particles at 3m physical distancing and prayers at the side received least percentage of particles deposition for all physical distancing. The particles also mostly deposited at the ceiling and the mosque's ground. Finally, the result showed that the further distance among the prayers will minimise the virus reproduction number, Ro value during the congregational prayer. The highest value of Ro for without physical distancing is 3 at the interval of 40s to 50s, while the value of Ro for 3m and 4m physical distancing is 0 at the interval of 80s to 100s. This is because the virus cannot be transmitted to many people as the distance between humans increases. The percentage of probability infected prayers is the highest for without physical distancing, which is 26.63% out of total prayers, while at the lowest for 4m physical distancing, which is 14.29% out of all prayers. In conclusion, the pathogen transmission among prayers can be reduced by applying physical distancing as the pathogens are droplet nuclei that are sufficiently small to remain suspended in the air for an extended period and can travel more than 2m distance.