Numerical determination of personal aerosol sampler aspiration efficiency

In this work the determination of the aspiration efficiency of personal aerosol samplers, commonly used in occupational exposure assessment, is investigated by means of CFD techniques. Specifically, it will be described a code to calculate the particle trajectories in a given flow field. At the present state the code considers only the effects of the mean flow field on the particle motion, whereas the turbulent diffusion effects are neglected. Comparisons with experimental measurements are also given in the framework of a research contract, supported by the European Community, with several experimental contributions from the participants. The main objective of the European research is to develop a new approach to experimentation with airborne particle flows, working on a reduced scale. This methodology has the advantage of allowing real-time aerosol determination and use of small wind tunnels, with a better experimental control. In this article we describe how the methodology has been verified using computational fluid dynamics. Experimental and numerical aspiration efficiencies have been compared and the influence of gravity and turbulence intensity in full and reduced scale has been investigated. The numerical techniques described here are in agreement with previous similar research and allow at least qualitative predictions of aspiration efficiency for real samplers, taking care of orientation from the incoming air flow. The major discrepancies among predicted and experimental results may be a consequence of bounce effects, which are very difficult to eliminate also by greasing the sampler surface.