_____________Graduate Students Seminar - Bloomfield 527 13:30-14:30, 28.6.2015____________
On the Use of Air Impregnable Screens as a Counter
Measure Against the Dispersion of Chemical Warfare
Agents or Toxic Industrial Chemicals in three
dimensional space
Ben Levav
Advisors: Prof. Boaz Golany and Dr. Eylam Gofer
Abstract
In this study we analyze the effectiveness of using Air Impregnable Screens (AIS) to
cope with accidental or intentional release of toxic materials (e.g, toxic industrial
chemicals or chemical warfare agents in case of terrorism) in buildings.
For this purpose we developed a mathematical descriptive model that takes as input
the structure of the building, the location of the source and its chemical and physical
characteristics. The output is a function that quantifies the relationship between the
number of expected casualties and the number of AISs' and their layout.
As mentioned above, one of the two parameters that comprise the input to our model
is the structure of the building. In the model it is represented by an Undirected
Connected Graph. The vertex set in the graph is the set of all rooms and hulls, and the
edge set includes all the connections between them (e.g, doors and windows).
The AISs are located on the graph's edges. Therefore, any given AIS layout can be
denoted by a sub-set of the edge set. Hence, an activated AIS is a disconnected edge
that limits the dispersion of toxic material. (The dispersion of toxic material through
the building is based on a model by Karlsson E. developed in 1995.)
Based on these notations we are able to determine a casualties minimizing AIS layout
for any given number of AIS, and thus compute a function that quantifies the
relationship between the number of AIS and the number of casualties.