Violent expiratory events: on coughing and sneezing
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A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
No Canadian affiliation. An affiliation-only frame — the usual design — would never have seen this work. It is one of the works that make the case for inverting the frame.
Abstract
Abstract Violent respiratory events such as coughs and sneezes play a key role in transferring respiratory diseases between infectious and susceptible individuals. We present the results of a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of the fluid dynamics of such violent expiratory events. Direct observation of sneezing and coughing events reveals that such flows are multiphase turbulent buoyant clouds with suspended droplets of various sizes. Our observations guide the development of an accompanying theoretical model of pathogen-bearing droplets interacting with a turbulent buoyant momentum puff. We develop in turn discrete and continuous models of droplet fallout from the cloud in order to predict the range of pathogens. According to the discrete fallout model droplets remain suspended in the cloud until their settling speed matches that of the decelerating cloud. A continuous fallout model is developed by adapting models of sedimentation from turbulent fluids. The predictions of our theoretical models are tested against data gathered from a series of analogue experiments in which a particle-laden cloud is ejected into a relatively dense ambient. Our study highlights the importance of the multiphase nature of respiratory clouds, specifically the suspension of the smallest drops by circulation within the cloud, in extending the range of respiratory pathogens.
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The record
- Venue
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics
- Topic
- Infection Control and Ventilation
- Field
- Medicine
- Canadian institutions
- —
- Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaNational Science Foundation
- Keywords
- TurbulenceMechanicsSettlingPhysicsMomentum (technical analysis)Cloud computingEnvironmental scienceMeteorologyAtmospheric sciencesComputer scienceThermodynamics
- Has abstract in OpenAlex
- yes