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Aerospace Engineering Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

Contaminant Transport

The AECFDL utilizes a combination of large-eddy simulation and immersed-boundary techniques to simulate gas-phase and particulate contaminant transport induced by human motion and other dynamic effects. The current approach involves the creation of animation sequences using rendering software (currently Autodesk’s 3DSmax) and embedding the generated STL files as immersed objects within the computational domain. Concepts from computational geometry are used to detect the object, and techniques from turbulent boundary layer theory are used to adjust the surrounding flow to the motion of the object. Applications have included particulate re-suspension due to up-and-down motion of a human foot, agent transport into airlocks and toxic-free areas, contaminant transport due to crowd motion, evolution of VOC emissions, and human thermal plume evolution.

Images

humantempverticalvelocity

Evolution of human thermal plume (right: vertical velocity left: temperature (deg. C))

 

airlock

Three people walking through an airlock

 

crowd

Movement of a crowd of 150 ellipsoidal ‘people’

 

5people

Five people exiting a pressurized airlock

 

hazmat1hazmat2
hazmat3hazmat4

Movement of a man in a HazMat suit through a flexible fabric curtain

dinosaur
MWD (Military Working Dinosaur) in action

 

References

Choi, J.-I., Edwards, J.R., Rosati, J.A., and Eisner, A. D. “Large Eddy Simulation of Particle Re-suspension during a Foot Step” Aerosol Science and Technology, Vol. 46, No. 7, 2012, pp. 767-780.

Choi, J.-I. and Edwards, J.R. “Large Eddy Simulation of Human-Induced Contaminant Transport in Room Compartments” Indoor Air, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2012, pp. 77-87.

Edwards, J.R. Choi, J-I., Ghosh, S., Gieseking, D.A., Eischen, J.D. “An Immersed Boundary Method for General Flow Applications” FEDSM-ICNMM2010-31097, Presented at the 3rd US / European Fluids Engineering Summer Meeting, Montreal, Aug. 1-5, 2010.

Oberoi, R.C., Choi, J.-I., Edwards, J.R., Rosati, J.A., Thornburg, J., and Rodes, C. “Human Induced Re-suspension in a Room” Aerosol Science and Technology, Vol. 44, 2010, pp. 216-229.

Choi, J-I. and Edwards, J.R. “Large Eddy Simulation and Zonal Modeling of Human-Induced Contaminant Transport” Indoor Air, Vol. 18, 2008, pp. 233-249.

Choi, J-I., Oberoi, R.C., Edwards, J.R., and Rosati, J.A. “An Immersed Boundary Method for Complex Incompressible Flows”, Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 224, 2007, pp. 757-784.