Papers by Bruno Umbezeiro
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused countless illness and death among those infected while disruptin... more The COVID-19 pandemic has caused countless illness and death among those infected while disrupting the global economy. Thus, it is of great interest to further investigate the mechanism of spread of such illnesses. Viruses such as Influenza and Coronaviruses are known to spread primarily through droplets which are aerosolized during violent expiratory events such as coughing. Human coughs have been measured extensively using techniques ranging from spirometry to particle image velocimetry (PIV). Previous research has quantified parameters such as peak velocity, expired volume, cough duration, temperature, and equivalent mouth diameters. The current work investigates flow characteristics of a 1:4.75 scale human cough simulator apparatus using hot-wire anemometry (HWA), and in the future, PIV. With real cough data provided by the literature, and data obtained through HWA and PIV from the small-scale apparatus, the apparatus will be scaled up to a typical human mouth diameter of 21.7 mm. A similar scaled-down apparatus is currently under biosafety (BS) review to be tested in a BSL3 lab where COVID-19 is to be aerosolized in a 30x30x90 cm chamber in order to investigate the viability of the virus in various environmental conditions and its deposition and survivability on different material surfaces. Allowing the aerosolized virus to transport and then deposit on a surface is more realistic than directly placing droplets containing the virus on the material using a pipette.
Universidade Estadual de Maringá, 2014
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Papers by Bruno Umbezeiro