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Effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a walking person
The dispersion of viral droplets plays a key role in the transmission of COVID-19. In this work, we analyze the dispersion of cough-generated droplets in the wake of a walking person for different space sizes. The air flow is simulated by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations, and th...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
AIP Publishing LLC
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7757602/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33362398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0034874 |
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author | Li, Zhaobin Wang, Hongping Zhang, Xinlei Wu, Ting Yang, Xiaolei |
author_facet | Li, Zhaobin Wang, Hongping Zhang, Xinlei Wu, Ting Yang, Xiaolei |
author_sort | Li, Zhaobin |
collection | PubMed |
description | The dispersion of viral droplets plays a key role in the transmission of COVID-19. In this work, we analyze the dispersion of cough-generated droplets in the wake of a walking person for different space sizes. The air flow is simulated by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations, and the droplets are modeled as passive Lagrangian particles. Simulation results show that the cloud of droplets locates around and below the waist height of the manikin after 2 s from coughing, which indicates that kids walking behind an infectious patient are exposed to higher transmission risk than adults. More importantly, two distinct droplet dispersion modes occupying significantly different contamination regions are discovered. A slight change of space size is found being able to trigger the transition of dispersion modes even though the flow patterns are still similar. This shows the importance of accurately simulating the air flow in predicting the dispersion of viral droplets and implies the necessity to set different safe-distancing guidelines for different environments. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7757602 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | AIP Publishing LLC |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77576022020-12-23 Effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a walking person Li, Zhaobin Wang, Hongping Zhang, Xinlei Wu, Ting Yang, Xiaolei Phys Fluids (1994) Letters The dispersion of viral droplets plays a key role in the transmission of COVID-19. In this work, we analyze the dispersion of cough-generated droplets in the wake of a walking person for different space sizes. The air flow is simulated by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations, and the droplets are modeled as passive Lagrangian particles. Simulation results show that the cloud of droplets locates around and below the waist height of the manikin after 2 s from coughing, which indicates that kids walking behind an infectious patient are exposed to higher transmission risk than adults. More importantly, two distinct droplet dispersion modes occupying significantly different contamination regions are discovered. A slight change of space size is found being able to trigger the transition of dispersion modes even though the flow patterns are still similar. This shows the importance of accurately simulating the air flow in predicting the dispersion of viral droplets and implies the necessity to set different safe-distancing guidelines for different environments. AIP Publishing LLC 2020-12-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7757602/ /pubmed/33362398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0034874 Text en © 2020 Author(s) Published under license by AIP Publishing. 1070-6631/2020/32(12)/121705/5/$30.00 All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Letters Li, Zhaobin Wang, Hongping Zhang, Xinlei Wu, Ting Yang, Xiaolei Effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a walking person |
title | Effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a
walking person |
title_full | Effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a
walking person |
title_fullStr | Effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a
walking person |
title_full_unstemmed | Effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a
walking person |
title_short | Effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a
walking person |
title_sort | effects of space sizes on the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a
walking person |
topic | Letters |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7757602/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33362398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0034874 |
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