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Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions
The continuance of the COVID-19 pandemic largely depends on the spread of virus-carrying aerosols in ambient air. The mechanism of virus transmission and infection remains under intense investigation. In this study, an evaporation flow model of airborne sputum droplets is proposed which considers th...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
AIP Publishing LLC
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8728632/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35002203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0076572 |
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author | Zeng, Gang Chen, Lin Yuan, Haizhuan Yamamoto, Ayumi Maruyama, Shigenao |
author_facet | Zeng, Gang Chen, Lin Yuan, Haizhuan Yamamoto, Ayumi Maruyama, Shigenao |
author_sort | Zeng, Gang |
collection | PubMed |
description | The continuance of the COVID-19 pandemic largely depends on the spread of virus-carrying aerosols in ambient air. The mechanism of virus transmission and infection remains under intense investigation. In this study, an evaporation flow model of airborne sputum droplets is proposed which considers the evolution effects of the humidity field under different particle distributions and solid/salt fraction interactions. The incompressible Navier–Stokes equations characterize a stream of airflow jets, and the convection-diffusion-evaporation process is used to account for the inhomogeneous humidity field caused by the respiratory tract. Momentum equations for droplet dynamics which involve the effects of drag, gravity, and Brownian motion on sputum droplets are introduced to quantify the transport of droplets in a humidity field. The Lattice Boltzmann method is used to track the evolution of the aerosol in space and time under different ambient temperature and relative humidity conditions. The results of the simulation demonstrate that airborne humidity accelerates the evaporation rate of droplet, while supersaturated humid air forms a vapor mass in front of the respiratory tract. Despite the short lifespan of this phenomenon, it significantly hinders the evaporation of the droplets. Besides, the droplet vortex dynamics in a humidity field are sensitive to the droplet size. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8728632 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | AIP Publishing LLC |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87286322022-01-05 Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions Zeng, Gang Chen, Lin Yuan, Haizhuan Yamamoto, Ayumi Maruyama, Shigenao Phys Fluids (1994) ARTICLES The continuance of the COVID-19 pandemic largely depends on the spread of virus-carrying aerosols in ambient air. The mechanism of virus transmission and infection remains under intense investigation. In this study, an evaporation flow model of airborne sputum droplets is proposed which considers the evolution effects of the humidity field under different particle distributions and solid/salt fraction interactions. The incompressible Navier–Stokes equations characterize a stream of airflow jets, and the convection-diffusion-evaporation process is used to account for the inhomogeneous humidity field caused by the respiratory tract. Momentum equations for droplet dynamics which involve the effects of drag, gravity, and Brownian motion on sputum droplets are introduced to quantify the transport of droplets in a humidity field. The Lattice Boltzmann method is used to track the evolution of the aerosol in space and time under different ambient temperature and relative humidity conditions. The results of the simulation demonstrate that airborne humidity accelerates the evaporation rate of droplet, while supersaturated humid air forms a vapor mass in front of the respiratory tract. Despite the short lifespan of this phenomenon, it significantly hinders the evaporation of the droplets. Besides, the droplet vortex dynamics in a humidity field are sensitive to the droplet size. AIP Publishing LLC 2021-12 2021-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8728632/ /pubmed/35002203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0076572 Text en © 2021 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing. 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 Zeng, Gang Chen, Lin Yuan, Haizhuan Yamamoto, Ayumi Maruyama, Shigenao Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions |
title | Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions |
title_full | Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions |
title_fullStr | Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions |
title_full_unstemmed | Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions |
title_short | Evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: Effects of humidity field evolutions |
title_sort | evaporation flow characteristics of airborne sputum droplets with solid fraction: effects of humidity field evolutions |
topic | ARTICLES |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8728632/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35002203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0076572 |
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