Numerical investigation of respiratory drops dynamics released during vocalization

Release of drops from a human body has been the focus of many recent investigations because of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Indirect virus transmission from asymptomatic individuals has been proved to be one of the major infectious routes and difficult to quantify, detect, and mitigate. We show in this work a detailed and novel numerical investigation of drops released during vocalization from a thermal manikin using a large eddy simulation coupled with Lagrangian tracking of drops. The vocalization experiment was modeled using existing data from the literature for modeling exhaled airflow, emission rate, and size distribution. Particular focus was on the definition of the boundary conditions for the exhalation process. Turbulence was compared with experimental data for the near mouth region for 75 exhalation breathing cycles and showed the sensitivity of different modeling assumptions at the mouth inlet. The results provide insights of special interest for understanding drop dynamics in speech-like exhalation modes, modeling the mouth inlet boundary conditions, and providing data for verifying other more simplified models.