The droplet deformation in dispersing units of high-pressure homogenizers (HPH) is examined experimentally and numerically. Due to the small size of common homogenizer nozzles, the visual analysis of the transient droplet generation is usually not possible. Therefore, a scaled setup was used. The droplet deformation was determined quantitatively by using a shadow imaging technique. It is shown that the influence of transient stresses on the droplets caused by laminar extensional flow upstream the orifice is highly relevant for the droplet breakup behind the nozzle. Classical approaches based on an equilibrium assumption on the other side are not adequate to explain the observed droplet distributions. Based on the experimental results, a relationship from the literature with numerical simulations adopting different models are used to determine the transient droplet deformation during transition through orifices. It is shown that numerical and experimental results are in fairly good agreement at limited settings. It can be concluded that a scaled apparatus is well suited to estimate the transient droplet formation up to the outlet of the orifice.
Overview The future belongs to children and they need education to shape the future with foresight and intention. Children therefore have the right to education, according to Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child [1]. However, professional education is not everything, because children must also experience their strengths and weaknesses together and educate each other to be responsible and considerate people, so that they become socially valuable personalities. Only in this way can they shape the future in a peaceful and humane way. Therefore, attending school is essential. However, children also have the right to protection and care by their parents and the state, because the welfare of the child must also be given priority in accordance with Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The question is therefore how schooling in community schools can be realized during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic without exposing children to an unnecessary risk of infection. It is not only about the children, because if the children are at risk, then so are their parents and grandparents and ultimately society as a whole. There are numerous concepts that promise safety in schools during the pandemic. When selecting concepts, the costs must of course be weighed against the benefits. People rightly expect an efficient use of resources. This means that either the set goal is achieved with the least possible resources or that the available resources are used to achieve the greatest possible approximation to the goal. In addition to the financial resources, however, the long-term consequences for the state, the economy, the population and the environment under the pressure of the pandemic must also be taken into account. Social cohesion and democracy must not be jeopardized either. Various protection concepts are currently under discussion. Often the advantages are overstated and the disadvantages concealed. Furthermore, some arguments are based on assumptions that are not true. The aim of this study is to provide a comparative assessment of the main protection concepts and to demonstrate, with the help of experimental analyses, the extent to which the protection concepts are effective. We will show that a comparatively high level of safety against infection in classrooms can be technically ensured without exposing children to masks. At the same time, the protection concept makes economic sense and the burden on the environment is comparatively low, so that infection prevention and climate protection do not have to be weighed against each other, because infection prevention and climate protection are political and social goals that have to be achieved together.
Using curvature and torsion to describe Lagrangian trajectories gives a full description of these as well as an insight into small and large time scales as temporal derivatives up to order 3 are involved. One might expect that the statistics of these properties depend on the geometry of the flow. Therefore, we calculated curvature and torsion probability density functions (PDFs) of experimental Lagrangian trajectories processed using the Shake-the-Box algorithm of turbulent von Kármán flow, Rayleigh-Bénard convection and a zero-pressure-gradient boundary layer over a flat plate. The results for the von Kármán flow compare well with experimental results for the curvature PDF and numerical simulation of homogeneous and isotropic turbulence for the torsion PDF. For the experimental Rayleigh-Bénard convection, the power law tails found agree with those measured for von Kármán flow. Results for the logarithmic layer within the boundary layer differ slightly, we give some potential explanation below. To detect and quantify the effect of anisotropy either resulting from a mean flow or large-scale coherent motions on the geometry or tracer particle trajectories, we introduce the curvature vector. We connect its statistics with those of velocity fluctuations and demonstrate that strong large-scale motion in a given spatial direction results in meandering rather than helical trajectories.
Many airborne pathogens such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are transmitted indoors via aerosol particles. During exercise, pulmonary ventilation can increase over 10-fold, and therefore, exercisers will exhale a greater volume of aerosol-containing air. However, we currently do not know how exercise affects the concentration of aerosol particles in exhaled air and the overall emission of aerosol particles. Consequently, we developed a method to measure in parallel the concentration of aerosol particles in expired air, pulmonary ventilation, and aerosol particle emission at rest and during a graded exercise test to exhaustion. We used this method to test eight women and eight men in a descriptive study. We found that the aerosol particle concentration in expired air increased significantly from 56 ± 53 particles/liter at rest to 633 ± 422 particles/liter at maximal intensity. Aerosol particle emission per subject increased significantly by a factor of 132 from 580 ± 489 particles/min at rest to a super emission of 76,200 ± 48,000 particles/min during maximal exercise. There were no sex differences in aerosol particle emission, but endurance-training subjects emitted significantly more aerosol particles during maximal exercise than untrained subjects. Overall, aerosol particle emission increased moderately up to an exercise intensity of ∼2 W/kg and exponentially thereafter. Together, these data might partly explain superspreader events especially during high-intensity group exercise indoors and suggest that strong infection prevention measures are needed especially during exercise at an intensity that exceeds ∼2 W/kg. Investigations of influencing factors like airway and whole-body hydration status during exercise on aerosol particle generation are needed.
Zusammenfassung Im folgenden Artikel wird eine optische Messtechnik vorgestellt und qualifizert, welche die simultane Bestimmung des dreidimensionalen (3D) Temperaturfeldes und der drei Komponenten des dreidimensionalen Geschwindigkeitsfeldes (3D3C) in mikrofluidischen Anwendungen ermöglicht. Dabei wird die Temperatur über das Verhältnis der Intensität der Lumineszenzsignale von zweifarbigen Polymerpartikeln ermittelt, während das Geschwindigkeitsfeld gleichzeitig anhand der Verschiebung individueller Partikelbilder berechnet werden kann. Um die Tiefeninformation zu erhalten, wird das etablierte Astigmatismus particle tracking velocimetry Verfahren verwendet. Mit der beschriebenen Methode werden simultane, volumetrische Messungen des Temperatur- und Geschwindigkeitsfeldes in einem temperierten Kanal durchgeführt und mit numerischen Simulationen verglichen. Dabei werden zwei unterschiedliche Kamerasysteme verwendet, um die Emission der lumineszierenden Farbstoffen zu trennen. Einerseits kommt ein Zweikameraaufbau mit einem dichroitischen Spiegel und andererseits eine einzelne Farbkamera zum Einsatz. Die Ergebnisse zeigen eine gute qualitative Übereinstimmung zwischen Experiment und Simulation, wobei die Qualität der Messergebnisse für beide Kamerasysteme vergleichbar ist. Durch die Verwendung von nur einer Farbkamera kann der experimentelle Aufwand jedoch stark verringert werden.
The thermal plume from a human significantly influences indoor air flows, impacting the dispersion of air constituents and consequently affecting indoor air quality. This is also relevant in the transport of respiratory particles, which results in spread of respiratory diseases including COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2. Our focus is on the sitting condition, a common scenario in various ventilated spaces. Prior human thermal plume studies employed predominantly anemometers to measure flow field which lack spatial resolution and detailed flow field. Here, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is utilized to directly visualize and analyze the human thermal plume. No direct comparison of thermal manikin and real human subject is considered in previous studies. Such experiments were performed with a thermal manikin and comparisons were made with a real human. The results show that the thermal plume from manikin without breathing function and the real person have similarities including bi-lobe structure of the flow field. The integral fluxes like volumetric flux, momentum flux, buoyancy force flux, and enthalpy flux were determined and compared. The average volume flux of real person and the thermal manikin was found to be 153 m3/h and 125 m3/h, respectively. The momentum flux was 0.005 N for both the cases. The estimation of enthalpy flux revealed that radiative heat transfer dominates and less than 50 % of the total flux is convected in the human thermal plume. In addition, a zonal simulation model was created and the volumetric flux was determined by simulation and is compared to the measured values.