Physics
Document Type
Article
Abstract
We investigate mucosalivary dispersal and deposition on horizontal surfaces corresponding to human exhalations with physical experiments under still-air conditions. Synthetic fluorescence tagged sprays with size and speed distributions comparable to human sneezes are observed with high-speed imaging. We show that while some larger droplets follow parabolic trajectories, smaller droplets stay aloft for several seconds and settle slowly with speeds consistent with a buoyant cloud dynamics model. The net deposition distribution is observed to become correspondingly broader as the source height H is increased, ranging from sitting at a table to standing upright. We find that the deposited mucosaliva decays exponentially in front of the source, after peaking at distance x=0.71m when H=0.5m, and x=0.56m when H=1.5m, with standard deviations ˜0.5m. Greater than 99% of the mucosaliva is deposited within x=2m, with faster landing times further from the source. We then demonstrate that a standard nose and mouth mask reduces the mucosaliva dispersed by a factor of at least a hundred compared to the peaks recorded when unmasked.
Publication Title
Physical Review Research
Publication Date
12-18-2020
Volume
2
Issue
4
ISSN
2643-1564
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.043391
Keywords
biological fluid dynamics, drop & bubble phenomena, flow instability, high-speed flow, interactions in fluids
Repository Citation
Chang, Brian; Sharma, Ram Sudhir; Huynh, Trinh; and Kudrolli, Arshad, "Aerial mucosalivary droplet dispersal distributions with implications for disease mitigation" (2020). Physics. 86.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_physics/86
Cross Post Location
Student Publications
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Conditions
Chang, B., Sharma, R. S., Huynh, T., & Kudrolli, A. (2020). Aerial mucosalivary droplet dispersal distributions with implications for disease mitigation. Physical Review Research, 2(4), 043391.
