Numerical study of virus transmission through droplets from sneezing in a cafeteria

Wu, Lei; Liu, Xiangdong; Yao, Feng; Chen, Yongping

doi:10.1063/5.0040803

Cited by 51 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Even with those protective measures, it is difficult to establish specific safety guidelines for diverse environmental conditions and various situations. 18 Thus, it is necessary to understand the aerodynamic movement of droplets in specific situations, implementing different scenarios with various mask performance and ambient air flow conditions. There have been efforts to investigate droplet propagation by simulating human activities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the filter microstructure and ambient air condition on the aerodynamic dispersion of sneezing droplets: A multiscale and multiphysics simulation study

Lee

Kim

et al. 2021

Physics of Fluids

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Concerns have been ramping up with regard to the propagation of infectious droplets due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The effects of filter microstructures and ambient air flows on droplet dispersion by sneezing are investigated by a fully coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian computational modeling with a micro-to-macroscale bridging approach. Materials that are commonly applied to face masks are modeled to generate two different virtual masks with various levels of filtration efficiency, and the leakage percentages through the unsealed nose and cheek areas were set to 11% and 25%, respectively. The droplet propagation distance was simulated with and without mask wearing in still and windy conditions involving head wind, tail wind, and side wind. The results demonstrate that wearing a face mask reduces the transmittance distance of droplets by about 90%–95% depending on the mask type; nonetheless, the droplets can be transmitted to distances of 20–25 cm in the forward direction even with mask-wearing. Thus, a social distance of at least 20 cm between people would help to prevent them from becoming exposed to ejected droplets. This study is significant in that important aspects of mask materials, in this case the porous microstructure-dependent filtration efficiency and permeability under varied ambient flow conditions, were considered for the first time in an evaluation of the barrier performance against droplet transmittance through a multiphase computational fluid dynamics simulation of air-droplet interaction and turbulence flow dynamics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the filter microstructure and ambient air condition on the aerodynamic dispersion of sneezing droplets: A multiscale and multiphysics simulation study

Lee

Kim

et al. 2021

Physics of Fluids

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“…Amid the outbreak of COVID-19, the focus has now shifted to the investigation of the transmission of SARS coronavirus-2 viruses in the form of aerosols and droplets in public places and to the respiratory tract. A plethora of research has been conducted in recent times to study the transmission behavior of SARS coronavirus-2 in various public places, such as elevators ( Dbouk and Drikakis, 2021 ), escalators ( Li et al , 2021a ), dental clinics ( Li et al , 2021b ), hospital isolation rooms ( Bhattacharyya et al , 2020 ), vehicle parking areas ( Nazari et al , 2021 ), buses ( Zhang et al , 2021 ), passenger aircraft ( Talaat et al , 2021 ), classrooms ( Foster and Kinzel, 2021 ), restaurants and cafeterias ( Liu et al , 2021 , Wu et al , 2021 ), conference rooms ( Mirikar et al , 2021 ), classrooms ( He et al , 2021 ), public restrooms ( Schreck et al , 2021 ), in a city ( Zheng et al , 2021 ), and even during a face-to-face scenario with an utterance ( Ishii et al , 2021 ). On the other hand, Jarvis (2020) found that the SARS coronavirus-2 borne aerosol particles can combine with particulate matter (PM) present in the atmosphere, possibly leading to even higher infection rates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 aerosol propagates through the age-specific upper airways

et al. 2021

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The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 causes significant respirational health problems, including high mortality rates worldwide. The deadly corona virus-containing aerosol enters the atmospheric air through sneezing, exhalation, or talking, assembling with the particulate matter, and subsequently transferring to the respiratory system. This recent outbreak illustrates that the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus-2 is deadlier for aged people than for other age groups. It is evident that the airway diameter reduces with age, and an accurate understanding of SARS aerosol transport through different elderly people's airways could potentially help the overall respiratory health assessment, which is currently lacking in the literature. This first-ever study investigates SARS COVID-2 aerosol transport in age-specific airway systems. A highly asymmetric age-specific airway model and fluent solver (ANSYS 19.2) are used for the investigation. The computational fluid dynamics measurement predicts higher SARS COVID-2 aerosol concentration in the airway wall for older adults than for younger people. The numerical study reports that the smaller SARS coronavirus-2 aerosol deposition rate in the right lung is higher than that in the left lung, and the opposite scenario occurs for the larger SARS coronavirus-2 aerosol rate. The numerical results show a fluctuating trend of pressure at different generations of the age-specific model. The findings of this study would improve the knowledge of SARS coronavirus-2 aerosol transportation to the upper airways which would thus ameliorate the targeted aerosol drug delivery system.

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“…Despite these methods, sometimes people can find themselves in a relatively closed space, such as taking public transportation, 9 dining in a restaurant, 10 and hospitals. 11 In these cases, SARS-CoV-2 can be spread in an enclosed space if an infected person spends time in this place.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of opening window position on aerosol transmission in an enclosed bus under windless environment

Yao

Liu

2021

Physics of Fluids

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The potential risk of spreading a virus during bus transportation motivates us to understand the aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and seek effective ways to protect passengers in a bus. In this paper, a typical scenario in which the virus spreads in a bus under a windless environment is numerically studied for further understanding of the spreading characteristics of aerosol transmission in an enclosed space. The air flow in the bus and the spreading processes of droplets with different open windows configurations are obtained and analyzed. The variations of droplet concentration in the air with time are examined and analyzed. In addition, the transient droplet concentration deposited on the passengers is also counted to analyze the potential contact transmission. The results indicate that opening a window next to an infected person shows an unsatisfactory performance in limiting droplet spreading range and reducing droplet concentration, eventually leading to a high risk of infection by aerosol transmission following contact transmission. In addition, opening multiple windows also shows an unsatisfactory result for removing droplets in a bus since the turbulence flow accelerates the spreading speed and expands the spreading range. In contrast, the droplets are removed from the indoor space of the bus quickly if a window is opened in the row in front of the infected person, which is beneficial for reducing aerosol and contact transmission in the bus. Furthermore, it is strongly recommended to avoid sitting in the row in front of the infected person where the highest droplet concentration can be observed.

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Numerical study of virus transmission through droplets from sneezing in a cafeteria

Cited by 51 publications

References 43 publications

Effects of the filter microstructure and ambient air condition on the aerodynamic dispersion of sneezing droplets: A multiscale and multiphysics simulation study

Effects of the filter microstructure and ambient air condition on the aerodynamic dispersion of sneezing droplets: A multiscale and multiphysics simulation study

How severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 aerosol propagates through the age-specific upper airways

The effect of opening window position on aerosol transmission in an enclosed bus under windless environment

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