Numerical Simulation of Indoor Human Sneezing

Transient numerical simulations have been carried out to mimic and analyse the transmission of various species resulting from human sneezing. The extent of the spread of sneezed air and associated droplets is also investigated based on various parameters. A 2D geometry of the human face is considered that captures the true topology and the outlet characteristics of the exhaled air mixture. Numerous parameters are required to be considered to capture the out-coming mixture trajectory and to track its concentration evolution as it enters and entrains with the surrounding air. These parameters include the velocity of the exhaled air mixture, the extent of mouth opening, the distribution of the mixture fraction, and its mist content. A multi-species Eulerian flow with discrete phase Lagrangian particles is considered. The results include the spatial and temporal distributions of the species and their velocity contour plots. Specifically, the concentration of the exhaled species is captured both spatially and temporally at several hypothetical stations within the computational domain, and away from the source to substantiate/refute the current recommended social distance parameter.

Stress Distribution and Gas Concentration Evolution during Protective Coal Seam Mining

Coal and gas burst is one of the significant and catastrophic hazards in underground longwall operations. To date, the protective coal seam mining has been recognized as the most effective mining method for minimizing or even avoiding the effect of the coal and gas burst. In this paper, numerical modelling and field test were carried out for the longwall operation in Qidong Coal Mine in order to investigate the induced stress and coal seam gas drainage performance in the protected coal seam after the complete extraction of the protective coal seam. It was found that four stress zones can be classified in the protected coal seam being the original stress zone, stress concentration zone, stress relief zone, and recompaction zone. In addition, the monitoring data of gas concentration and volume change in the field agree well with the numerical modelling results.

Stochastic Dynamic Model of Sulfate Corrosion Reactions in Concrete Materials considering the Effects of Colored Gaussian Noises

The corrosion reactions in concrete materials subjected to external environment attack can lead to the deterioration of concrete. However, the effects of internal fluctuations on the corrosion reaction process have not been reported in current studies on damage of concrete materials. To comprehensively describe the effects of internal fluctuations, the stochastic dynamic model of corrosion reactions in concrete materials subjected to sulfate attack is established based on the law of mass conservation and random process theory, in which internal fluctuations and the parameters of the chemical system are, respectively, regarded as colored Gaussian noises and a series of random variables. An experiment of sulfate corrosion reactions in concrete material is carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, the effects of variations of the initial reactant concentrations on the concentration evolution processes of the corrosion products are investigated. Results show that the stochastic dynamical responses of the corrosion reactions in concrete can be comprehensively investigated by the proposed stochastic mathematical model; the probabilistic information of the corrosion products can also be obtained conveniently. The concentration evolution process of sulfate corrosion products is a random process. The experimental data are only some samples of the random process. Concentrations of the corrosion products in concrete materials significantly fluctuate with the variations of the initial reactant concentrations.

Bipolar carbon and hydrogen isotope constraints on the Holocene methane budget

Atmospheric methane concentration shows a well-known decrease over the first half of the Holocene following the Northern Hemisphere summer insolation before it started to increase again to preindustrial values. There is a debate about what caused this change in the methane concentration evolution, in particular, whether an early anthropogenic influence or natural emissions led to the reversal of the atmospheric CH4 concentration evolution. Here, we present new methane concentration and stable hydrogen and carbon isotope data measured on ice core samples from both Greenland and Antarctica over the Holocene. With the help of a two-box model and the full suite of CH4 parameters, the new data allow us to quantify the total methane emissions in the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere separately as well as their stable isotopic signatures, while interpretation of isotopic records of only one hemisphere may lead to erroneous conclusions. For the first half of the Holocene our results indicate an asynchronous decrease in Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere CH4 emissions by more than 30 Tg CH4 yr−1 in total, accompanied by a drop in the northern carbon isotopic source signature of about −3 ‰. This cannot be explained by a change in the source mix alone but requires shifts in the isotopic signature of the sources themselves caused by changes in the precursor material for the methane production. In the second half of the Holocene, global CH4 emissions increased by about 30 Tg CH4 yr−1, while preindustrial isotopic emission signatures remained more or less constant. However, our results show that this early increase in methane emissions took place in the Southern Hemisphere, while Northern Hemisphere emissions started to increase only about 2000 years ago. Accordingly, natural emissions in the southern tropics appear to be the main cause of the CH4 increase starting 5000 years before present, not supporting an early anthropogenic influence on the global methane budget by East Asian land use changes.