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Respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media

We investigate, by means of pore-scale lattice Boltzmann simulations, the mechanisms of interception of respiratory droplets within fibrous porous media composing face masks. We simulate the dynamics, coalescence, and collection of droplets of the size comparable with the fiber and pore size in typi...

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Autores principales: Maggiolo, Dario, Sasic, Srdjan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: AIP Publishing LLC 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8404382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34471337
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0060947
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author Maggiolo, Dario
Sasic, Srdjan
author_facet Maggiolo, Dario
Sasic, Srdjan
author_sort Maggiolo, Dario
collection PubMed
description We investigate, by means of pore-scale lattice Boltzmann simulations, the mechanisms of interception of respiratory droplets within fibrous porous media composing face masks. We simulate the dynamics, coalescence, and collection of droplets of the size comparable with the fiber and pore size in typical fluid-dynamic conditions that represent common expiratory events. We discern the fibrous microstructure into three categories of pores: small, large, and medium-sized pores, where we find that within the latter, the incoming droplets tend to be more likely intercepted. The size of the medium-sized pores relative to the fiber size is placed between the droplet-to-fiber size ratio and a porosity-dependent microstructural parameter [Formula: see text] , with ϵ being the porosity. In larger pores, droplets collection is instead inhibited by the small pore-throat-to-fiber size ratio that characterizes the pore perimeter, limiting their access. The efficiency of the fibrous media in intercepting droplets without compromising breathability, for a given droplet-to-fiber size ratio, can be estimated by knowing the parameter [Formula: see text]. We propose a simple model that predicts the average penetration of droplets into the fibrous media, showing a sublinear growth with [Formula: see text]. Permeability is shown also to scale well with [Formula: see text] but following a superlinear growth, which indicates the possibility of increasing the medium permeability at a little cost in terms of interception efficiency for high values of porosity. As a general design guideline, the results also suggest that a fibrous layer thickness relative to the fiber size should exceed the value [Formula: see text] in order to ensure effective droplets filtration.
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spelling pubmed-84043822021-08-30 Respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media Maggiolo, Dario Sasic, Srdjan Phys Fluids (1994) ARTICLES We investigate, by means of pore-scale lattice Boltzmann simulations, the mechanisms of interception of respiratory droplets within fibrous porous media composing face masks. We simulate the dynamics, coalescence, and collection of droplets of the size comparable with the fiber and pore size in typical fluid-dynamic conditions that represent common expiratory events. We discern the fibrous microstructure into three categories of pores: small, large, and medium-sized pores, where we find that within the latter, the incoming droplets tend to be more likely intercepted. The size of the medium-sized pores relative to the fiber size is placed between the droplet-to-fiber size ratio and a porosity-dependent microstructural parameter [Formula: see text] , with ϵ being the porosity. In larger pores, droplets collection is instead inhibited by the small pore-throat-to-fiber size ratio that characterizes the pore perimeter, limiting their access. The efficiency of the fibrous media in intercepting droplets without compromising breathability, for a given droplet-to-fiber size ratio, can be estimated by knowing the parameter [Formula: see text]. We propose a simple model that predicts the average penetration of droplets into the fibrous media, showing a sublinear growth with [Formula: see text]. Permeability is shown also to scale well with [Formula: see text] but following a superlinear growth, which indicates the possibility of increasing the medium permeability at a little cost in terms of interception efficiency for high values of porosity. As a general design guideline, the results also suggest that a fibrous layer thickness relative to the fiber size should exceed the value [Formula: see text] in order to ensure effective droplets filtration. AIP Publishing LLC 2021-08 2021-08-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8404382/ /pubmed/34471337 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0060947 Text en © 2021 Author(s). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ).
spellingShingle ARTICLES
Maggiolo, Dario
Sasic, Srdjan
Respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media
title Respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media
title_full Respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media
title_fullStr Respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media
title_full_unstemmed Respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media
title_short Respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media
title_sort respiratory droplets interception in fibrous porous media
topic ARTICLES
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8404382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34471337
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0060947
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