Abstract
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread pattern continues to show that geographical barriers alone cannot contain a virus. Asymptomatic carriers play a critical role in the nature of this virus quickly escalating into a global pandemic. Asymptomatic carriers may transmit the virus unintentionally through sporadic sneezing. A novel Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach has been proposed with a realistic modeling of a human sneeze achieved by the combination of state-of-the-art experimental and numerical methods. This modeling approach may be suitable for future engineering analyses aimed at reshaping public spaces and common areas, with the main objective to accurately predict the spread of aerosol and droplets that may contain pathogens. This study shows that the biomechanics of a human sneeze, including complex muscle contractions and relaxations, can be accurately modeled by the angular head motion and the dynamic pressure response during sneezing. These have been considered as the human factors and were implemented in the CFD simulation by imposing a momentum source term to the coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian momentum equations. The momentum source was modeled by the measured dynamic pressure response in conjunction with the angular head motion. This approach eliminated the need to create an ad hoc set of inlet boundary conditions. With this proposed technique, it is easier to add multiple fixed and/or moving sources of sneezes in complex computational domains. Additionally, extensive sensitivity analyses based on different environmental conditions were performed, and their impact was described in terms of potential virus spread.
Highlights
In light of ongoing events, the scientific community has been putting a great deal of effort in response to the 2019–2020 SARSCoV-2 pandemic
The equation for mass balance of the particle mp is in the following form:22 dmp dt where ρp is the density of the particle liquid phase, Dp is the molecular diffusivity of the liquid phase, Dv is the molecular diffusivity of the vapor phase, and As is the surface area of the particle, and we addressed the importance of a correct model for convective mass transfer by using a correlation for the Sherwood number (Sh) and the Spalding mass transfer number (B)
Extensive computational studies of the human sneeze have been conducted with realistic modeling achieved by the combination of state-of-the-art experimental and numerical methods
Summary
In light of ongoing events, the scientific community has been putting a great deal of effort in response to the 2019–2020 SARSCoV-2 pandemic. It is extremely important to create a modern, reliable computational framework that is able to simulate different scenarios while containing as much physics as possible This can be accomplished by the creation of a model that can quantify the number of droplets and aerosols evaporated and/or deposited on surfaces during all human related exhalations. Wells addressed the main key factors that could be modeled and that could affect the spread of airborne infections He developed the well-known droplet falling curve that was used to estimate the evaporation and deposition time of a single falling droplet. Xie et al. revisited the Wells droplet falling curve by considering the effect of relative humidity (RH), air speed, and respiratory jets In their model, the droplets were able to diffuse in two dimensions.
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