Eulerian modeling of aerosol transport and deposition in respiratory tract under thermodynamic equilibrium condition

Abstract

A computational study is carried out using a purely Eulerian approach for investigating the inhaled e-cigarette aerosol transport and deposition in the human upper respiratory tract (URT). These aerosols consist of some volatile compounds and are generally hygroscopic with vapor liquid phase change at the particle–air interface. An Eulerian model is developed based on the thermodynamic equilibrium assumption, where the local masses of the constituents are partitioned into either the vapor or liquid phases subject to the local equilibrium constraints at each point in the computational mesh at the end of each time-step. The computational model is validated using available experimental data, with the results demonstrating good agreement. Given the fact that experimental determination of the deposition under human inhalation conditions is extremely difficult, this modeling approach can be considered as a practical method to estimate deposition of aerosol constituents in the upper respiratory tract.