Coronavirus disease 2019 has become a global pandemic infectious respiratory disease with high mortality and infectiousness. This paper investigates respiratory droplet transmission, which is critical to understanding, modeling, and controlling epidemics. In the present work, we implemented flow visualization, particle image velocimetry, and particle shadow tracking velocimetry to measure the velocity of the airflow and droplets involved in coughing and then constructed a physical model considering the evaporation effect to predict the motion of droplets under different weather conditions. The experimental results indicate that the convection velocity of cough airflow presents the relationship t −0.7 with time; hence, the distance from the cougher increases by t 0.3 in the range of our measurement domain. Substituting these experimental results into the physical model reveals that small droplets (initial diameter D ≤ 100 μ m) evaporate to droplet nuclei and that large droplets with D ≥ 500 μ m and an initial velocity u 0 ≥ 5 m/s travel more than 2 m. Winter conditions of low temperature and high relative humidity can cause more droplets to settle to the ground, which may be a possible driver of a second pandemic wave in the autumn and winter seasons.

Fluid flow characteristics in a two strand slab continuous casting tundish with different configurations of argon gas bubbling curtain (GBC) were investigated in physical modelling experiments. It was found from this research that the GBC with a small flow rate acted as a gas dam and could greatly improve the flow characteristics in the tundish. It increased dramatically the peak concentration time and plug flow volume, decreased greatly the dead volume, created surface directed flow and eliminated short circuiting. Therefore, the fluid flow characteristics in a tundish with GBC were favourable to the floatation and separation of inclusions from molten steel. The flow characteristics with low gas flow rate and short distance of the bubbling curtain from the tundish outlet were better than those with high gas flow rate and large distance of the curtain to the outlet. The optimal configuration for the improvement in fluid flow characteristics was turbulence inhibitor (TI)-weir-dam-GBC (TI-W-D-GBC), followed by TI-channel weir (CW)-GBC, TI-W-GBC and TI-GBC.

Fluid flow characteristics in a two‐strand slab tundish with Ar bubbling curtain were studied in water modelling experiments. It was found that the Ar bubbling curtain can greatly improve the flow characteristics in the tundish with a weir, a dam and a turbulence inhibitor. It dramatically increased the peak concentration time and plug volume and greatly decreased the dead volume, but hardly influenced the minimum residence time. Therefore, the fluid flow characteristics in a tundish with Ar bubbling curtain were favourable to the flotation and separation of inclusions from molten steel. The flow characteristics with low gas flow rate and short distance of the Ar bubbling curtain from the tundish outlet were better than those with high gas flow rate and large distance of the curtain from the outlet.

During the pandemic of COVID-19, the public is encouraged to take stairs or escalators instead of elevators. However, the dispersion of respiratory droplets in these places, featured by slopes and human motion, is not well understood yet. It is consequently unclear whether the commonly recommended social-distancing guidelines are still appropriate in these scenarios. In this work, we analyze the dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a passenger riding an escalator with numerical simulations, focusing on the effects of the slope and speed of the escalator on the droplet dispersion. In the simulations, a one-way coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian approach is adopted, with the air-flow solved using the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes method and the droplets modeled as passive Lagrangian particles. It is found that the slope alters the vertical concentration of the droplets in the passenger's wake significantly. The deflection of cough-generated jet and the wake flow behind the passenger drive the cough-generated droplets upwards when descending an escalator and downwards when ascending, resulting in both higher suspension height and larger spreading range of the viral droplets on a descending escalator than on an ascending one. These findings suggest that the present social-distancing guidelines may be inadequate on descending escalators and need further investigation.

The dispersion of cough-generated droplets from a person going up- or downstairs was investigated through a laboratory experiment in a water tunnel. This experiment was carried out with a manikin mounted at inclination angles facing the incoming flow to mimic a person going up or down. Detailed velocity measurements and flow visualization were conducted in the water tunnel experiments. To investigate the influence of the initial position on the motion of particles, a virtual particle approach was adopted to simulate the dispersion of particles using the measured velocity field. Particle clustering, which is caused by the unsteadiness of the flow, was observed in both flow visualization and virtual particle simulation. For the case of going upstairs, particles are concentrated below the person’s shoulder and move downward with a short travel distance. For the case of going downstairs, particles dispersing over the person’s head advect over for a long distance. We also found that the motion of the particles is closely related to the initial position. According to the results in this study, suggestions for the prevention of respiratory infectious disease are made.

Communicated by K. TakizawaWe present a residual-based turbulence model for problems with free surfaces. The method is derived based on variational multiscale ideas that assume a decomposition of the solution fields into overlapping scales that are termed as coarse and fine scales. The fine scales are further split hierarchically into fine-scales level-I and fine-scales level-II. The hierarchical variational problems that govern the two fine-scale components are modeled employing bubble functions approach. The model for level-II scales is variationally embedded in the mixed field level-I problem to yield a stable level-I formulation. Subsequently, the model for level-I scales that in fact constitutes the fine-scale turbulence model is then variationally injected in the coarse-scale variational form. A significant feature of the method is that it does not contain any embedded tunable parameters. To accommodate the moving boundaries we cast the formulation in an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian frame of reference. The free surface boundary condition is imposed weakly which results in a formulation that conserves the volume of the fluid. A variety of benchmark problems show the accuracy and range of applicability of the proposed formulation and results are compared with published data. A wavy bed problem is investigated to show the interaction of turbulence generated at the bottom surface with the free surface thereby leading to irregular free surface elevations. Keywords: Irregular free surfaces; open channel; residual-based turbulence models; variational multiscale method; large eddy simulation. † Corresponding author 1 Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH on 08/18/15. For personal use only. 2 R. Calderer et al.

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