Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a large number of flow visualization procedures have been proposed to assess the effect of personal protective equipment on respiratory flows. This study suggests infrared thermography as a beneficial visualization technique because it is completely noninvasive and safe and, thus, can be used on live individuals rather than mannequins or lung simulators. Here, we examine the effect of wearing either of three popular face coverings (a surgical mask, a cloth mask, or an N95 respirator with an exhalation valve) on thermal signatures of exhaled airflows near a human face while coughing, talking, or breathing. The flow visualization using a mid-wave infrared camera captures the dynamics of thermal inhomogeneities induced by increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the exhaled air. Thermal images demonstrate that both surgical and cloth face masks allow air leakage through the edges and the fabric itself, but they decrease the initial forward velocity of a cough jet by a factor of four. The N95 respirator, on the other hand, reduces the infrared emission of carbon dioxide near the person's face almost completely. This confirms that the N95-type mask may indeed lead to excessive inhalation of carbon dioxide as suggested by some recent studies.
This paper explores the phenomena associated with pulsed discharge energy deposition in the near-surface gas layer in front of a shock wave from the flow control perspective. The energy is deposited in 200 ns by a high-current distributed sliding discharge of a ‘plasma sheet’ type. The discharge, covering an area of mm2, is mounted on the top or bottom wall of a shock tube channel. In order to analyse the time scales of the pulsed discharge effect on an unsteady supersonic flow, we consider the propagation of a planar shock wave along the discharge surface area 50–500 μs after the discharge pulse. The processes in the discharge chamber are visualized experimentally using the shadowgraph method and modelled numerically using 2D/3D CFD simulations. The interaction between the planar shock wave and the discharge-induced thermal layer results in the formation of a lambda-shock configuration and the generation of vorticity in the flow behind the shock front. We determine the amount and spatial distribution of the electric energy rapidly transforming into heat by comparing the calculated flow patterns and the experimental shadow images. It is shown that the uniformity of the discharge energy distribution strongly affects the resulting flow dynamics. Regions of turbulent mixing in the near-surface gas are detected when the discharge energy is deposited non-uniformly along the plasma sheet. They account for the increase in the cooling rate of the discharge-induced thermal layer and significantly influence its interaction with an incident shock wave.
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