Turbulent dispersion via fan-generated flows

Siobhan K. Halloran; Anthony S. Wexler; William D. Ristenpart

doi:10.1063/1.4879256

Turbulent dispersion via fan-generated flows

Siobhan K. Halloran, Anthony S. Wexler, William D. Ristenpart

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Turbulent dispersion of passive scalar quantities has been extensively studied in wind tunnel settings, where the flow is carefully conditioned using flow straighteners and grids. Much less is known about turbulent dispersion in the "unconditioned" flows generated by fans that are ubiquitous in indoor environments, despite the importance of these flows to pathogen and contaminant transport. Here, we demonstrate that a point source of scalars released into an airflow generated by an axial fan yields a plume whose width is invariant with respect to the fan speed. The results point toward a useful simplification in modeling of disease and pollution spread via fan-generated flows.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	055114
Journal	Physics of Fluids
Volume	26
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4879256
State	Published - May 30 2014

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Condensed Matter Physics

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Turbulent dispersion via fan-generated flows

Abstract

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