Characteristics of aerosol droplets generated by cough simulator

초록

Airborne disease transmission has been a topic of interests in various fields over decade. The aerosol droplets emitted by a patient's cough with infectious disease such as Severe acute repiratory syndrome(SARS), influenza and Tuberculosis and so on. Coughing is found to be one of the primary sources of airborne disease. We constructed the characterization system and a cough simulator for repeating experiment which can simulate the aerosol droplets produced by human expiratory activities. The Particle Image Velocimetry systme(PIV) and acrylic glass chamber were used to cough velocity measurement.Total volume of air was measured the spirometer (CHEST corp., HI-801) as used by lung capacity factor, and forced vital capacity (FVC) was regarded as the emitted volume by human cough. More than 20 recruited persons were asked to generate coughs in the system and we measured the velocity distribution and FVC of them. Based on the physical measurement of human coughs, we developed a cough simulator to imitate a human cough. A volume of cough simulator's air tank was relicated to the lung capacity and automatic valve system can control the opening time of mouth during a cough. In this study, we analyzed the size distribution and flying distance of aerosol droplets exhaled by the cough simulator.