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 | |
| State | Published - May 30 2014 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Condensed Matter Physics
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Cite this
Halloran, S. K., Wexler, A. S., & Ristenpart, W. D. (2014). Turbulent dispersion via fan-generated flows. Physics of Fluids, 26(5), [055114]. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4879256