Hi Smoky Sick Of School: Hi Air Quality Impacts Learning.

Hi Smoky Sick Of School: Hi Air Quality Impacts Learning.

Faking sick. It’s a classic trick for kids to get out of school, stay home for a day and indulge themselves in some parental pampering and videogames. But in Beech Grove, Indiana, a local institution may actually be making children sick — it was recently cited for having excessively high carbon dioxide levels.

Hi HOME SWEET HOME:

As noted by RTV6, South Grove Intermediate School must now spend $300,000 to fix air quality issues following a Marion County Public Health Department citation for high carbon dioxide levels. 

The first indication of a school-wide problem came in January 2013, when South Grove was put on notice for “inadequate amount of outdoor air supplied to classrooms.” 

In August 2014, they were again under scrutiny for poor air quality, and now there’s no other option: fix the problem or kids are staying home.

Brent Crouch, the school district’s Air Quality Manager, tests the CO2 levels at South Grove every week, and while results are improving, he notes that “we’re gonna struggle with this in the winter time.”

Part of the problem is aging equipment: many of the heating and cooling units at South Grove and other district schools are more than 30 years old.

Superintendent Paul Kaiser says there’s no danger to children: “we just need to bring more outside air into the building and that’s what we’re working on.”

Hi WHATS THE BIG DEAL?

CO2 is naturally present in air, to the tune of 0.0314 percent. 

Nitrogen makes up the Lion’s Share of breathable air at just over 78 percent, with oxygen coming in second at almost 21 percent. 

This translates to an outdoor concentration of 380 parts per million (PPM) of CO2.

Indoors, the concentration often jumps to 1000 PPM or more over the course of a day, especially in confined space with large numbers of people for an extended period of time — such as classrooms. In those situations, CO2 concentrations can quickly rise to 2500 or even 3000 PPM, and according to a recent Berkeley Lab study, these levels can “can significantly impair people’s decision-making process.” 

In an environment where children are tasked with understanding new concepts and demonstrating proficiency in areas such as math or science, this is a problem.

And while $300,000 covers one school in Beech Grove, a cool $4 million is required to solve the problem district-wide. That’s a lot of money from taxpayers. 

Sure, 30 year-old equipment is partly to blame, but as noted by the Health Department findings, the biggest issue here is outdoor air supply. 

For any company this should be a red flag, and also suggests a way to keep “sick days” at a minimum. Consistent, thorough cleanings of HVAC systems coupled with regular air checks can both lower total infrastructure costs and ensure a passing grade from health inspectors.

Hi Blast, Explosion & Impact: Simulation:

Hi Blast, Explosion & Impact: Simulation:

It’s impossible to predict many of the hazardous events that can occur in buildings: gas leaks, terrorist attacks, an object impacting a building happen without warning, to name a few, and because accidents can’t always be prevented, building designers, city officials and administrators need to take the possibility of these events into account when they are designing and building a new structure. Designing a building with these threats in mind can improve the structural integrity of the building, and it can also create a more safe and comfortable environment for those who use the structure on a daily basis.

In many disaster scenarios, destruction is so severe that reconstructing the event is difficult. But the knowledge gained from piecing together what happened can benefit designers and engineers. ANSYS software allows engineers to virtually model various structures and test the impact of environmental and destructive forces as many times as needed to completely understand the effects of a disaster on a structure.

Deformation of a structure under the impact of inside explosion.

Through virtual modeling, designers can learn not only what happens to a structure when disaster strikes, but why. Consider this example: A portion of a building collapses when hit by a vehicle. Multiphysics insight into the development of the disaster can provide guidance on how structures can be improved to keep survivors safe — such as modifying ventilation and fire suppressions systems — and strengthened to survive future events. The unequalled depth and unparalleled breadth of simulation software from ANSYS offers engineers many opportunities to optimize building designs to protect them from known yet difficult-to-predict dangers.

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