Dr Farzad Pourfattah

The details of the interaction of human thermal plume and breathing activities are simulated in the current study of an unsteady turbulent flow field in an elevator cabin. Air velocity and temperature distributions of the circulation flow pattern (i.e., the macroenvironment), the breathing-scale microenvironment's characteristics, and the thermal plume's fate are analyzed. The current study is aimed at showing how respiratory activities such as breathing and human thermal plumes affect the flow field and respiratory contaminants dispersion pattern in a nonventilated enclosed environment (the elevator cabin). The results from three cases, i.e., breathing thermal manikins, nonbreathing thermal manikins, and isothermal breathing manikins, are contrasted to unveil better the effects of human thermal plume and breathing on the flow field, including the velocity distribution, dispersion pattern of the exhaled contaminant, the human body's heat transfer coefficient, and the large-scale flow pattern. Results reveal that breathing inhalation increases the upward velocity of the thermal plume on the one hand, which directly affects the microenvironment and indirectly impacts the macroenvironment due to the more vigorous reflected thermal plume. On the other hand, the upward thermal plume reduces the penetration length of the exhaled jet. Breathing activities create ring vortices that connect the microenvironment and the macroenvironment. The circulation flow features a downward flow in the cabin's center, affecting the vortex strength and contaminant dispersion pattern. Overall, the human thermal plume and human breathing make comparable contributions to the resulting elevator-cabin flow characteristics.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic has become an unprecedented global challenge for public health and the economy. As with other respiratory viruses, coronavirus is easily spread through breathing droplets, particularly in poorly ventilated or crowded indoor environments. Therefore, understanding how indoor environmental conditions affect virus transmission is crucial for taking appropriate precautions. In this study, the effects of different natural wind-driven ventilation conditions and ambient relative humidities (RHs) on the cough droplet transmission in an indoor environment are investigated using the large eddy simulation approach with Lagrangian droplet tracking. The simulations show that the velocity and temperature of droplets significantly decrease in a short time after ejection. This feature for droplet velocity and temperature is more pronounced at smaller inlet wind speed (Vin) and larger Vin or lower RH, respectively. Wind-driven ventilation plays a crucial role in affecting the horizontal transmission distance of cough droplets. Under strong natural ventilation conditions (Vin = 4.17 m/s), cough droplets can spread more than 4 m within 1 s, whereas they can only travel within 2 m under weak ventilation with Vin = 0.05 m/s. The results confirm that the social distancing of 2 m is insufficient, while revealing that proper ventilation control can significantly remove virus-laden droplets from indoor air. We believe that there is no absolute safe social distancing because the droplet transmission and dispersion are mainly controlled by the local environmental conditions, and for safety, we recommend wearing a face mask and maintaining good indoor ventilation to reduce the release of potentially virus-laden droplets into the air.

Maintaining the operating temperature within the allowable range for electronic components is crucial. This work aims to optimize the design of a heatsink manifold microchannel where the working fluid is MWCNT/water-nanofluid. The design parameters include inlet width (Linlet) , outlet width (Loutlet) , heatsink height (hf) , and MWCNT nanoparticle volume fraction in the working fluid (f). Minimum pressure drop and minimum thermal resistance are selected as the objective functions. The finite volume method simulates the flow field and heat transfer at each design point. A regression model between the objective functions and the design variables is derived by utilizing the response surface method, and the sensitivity analysis of objective functions is performed by Pareto chart analysis. Finally, the response optimization method configures the optimal design points as Linlet, Loutlet, hf being 85, 91, 245 µm, respectively, and f 0.016, corresponding to a pressure loss at 2677¿Pa and thermal resistance at 0.8281¿K/W. According to the results, the outlet width and heatsink height significantly affect the pressure drop and thermal resistance. Moreover, the physics of the flow field shows that the strength of the corner vortex and separation on the manifold can play a significant role in the thermal and hydraulic performance of the manifold microchannel heat sink. A numerical simulation has been performed to assess the regression model's accuracy in predicting the thermal and fluid performance at the optimum point, showing a good agreement between the model prediction and the simulation results.

Recently, the COVID-19 virus pandemic has led to many studies on the airborne transmission of expiratory droplets. While limited experiments and on-site measurements offer qualitative indication of potential virus spread rates and the level of transmission risk, the quantitative understanding and mechanistic insights also indispensably come from careful theoretical modeling and numerical simulation efforts around which a surge of research papers has emerged. However, due to the highly interdisciplinary nature of the topic, numerical simulations of the airborne spread of expiratory droplets face serious challenges. It is essential to examine the assumptions and simplifications made in the existing modeling and simulations, which will be reviewed carefully here to better advance the fidelity of numerical results when compared to the reality. So far, existing review papers have focused on discussing the simulation results without questioning or comparing the model assumptions. This review paper focuses instead on the details of the model simplifications used in the numerical methods and how to properly incorporate important processes associated with respiratory droplet transmission. Specifically, the critical issues reviewed here include modeling of the respiratory droplet evaporation, droplet size distribution, and time-dependent velocity profile of air exhaled from coughing and sneezing. According to the literature review, another problem in numerical simulations is that the virus decay rate and suspended viable viral dose are often not incorporated; therefore here, empirical relationships for the bioactivity of coronavirus are presented. It is hoped that this paper can assist researchers to significantly improve their model fidelity when simulating respiratory droplet transmission.