Effects of surgical masks on aerosol dispersion in professional singing

Background In the CoVID-19 pandemic, singing came into focus as a high-risk activity for the infection with airborne viruses and was therefore forbidden by many governmental administrations. Objective The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of surgical masks regarding the spatial and temporal dispersion of aerosol and droplets during professional singing. Methods Ten professional singers performed a passage of the Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode of Joy” in two experimental setups—each with and without surgical masks. First, they sang with previously inhaled vapor of e-cigarettes. The emitted cloud was recorded by three cameras to measure its dispersion dynamics. Secondly, the naturally expelled larger droplets were illuminated by a laser light sheet and recorded by a high-speed camera. Results The exhaled vapor aerosols were decelerated and deflected by the mask and stayed in the singer’s near-field around and above their heads. In contrast, without mask, the aerosols spread widely reaching distances up to 1.3 m. The larger droplets were reduced by up to 86% with a surgical mask worn. Significance The study shows that surgical masks display an effective tool to reduce the range of aerosol dispersion during singing. In combination with an appropriate aeration strategy for aerosol removal, choir singers could be positioned in a more compact assembly without contaminating neighboring singers all singers.

Visualization of Internal Flow Field of Propeller Fan

Propeller fans are required not only to have high performance but also to be extremely quiet. The internal flow field of ventilation propeller fans is even more complicated because they usually have a very peculiar configuration with protruding blades upstream. Thus, many kinds of internal vortices yield which cause noise and their cause and countermeasures are needed to be clarified. The purposes of this paper are to visualize the internal flow of the propeller fan from the static and rotating frame of reference. The internal flow visualization measured from the static frame gives approximately the scale of the tip vortex. The visualization from the rotating coordinate system yields a better understanding of the flow phenomena occurring at the specific blade. The experiment is implemented by using a small camera mounted on the shaft of the fan and rotated it to capture the behavior of the vortices using a laser light sheet to irradiate the blade surface. Hence, the flow field of the specific blade could be understood to some extent. The visualized results are compared with the CFD results and these results show a similar tendency about the generation point and developing process of the tip vortex. In addition, it is found that the noise measurement result is relevant to the effect of tip vortex from the visualization result.