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When the dust settles: predicting deposition of particulate and aerosols

Project supervisors: Duncan Lockerby; James Kermode

Student: Anson Lee

Predicting the deposition of ultra-fine particulate and aerosolized drops is important in a wide range of applications: from understanding pathogen or drug-laden droplet deposition in the respiratory systems to determining the composition of airborne particulate matter using environmental sensors. The physics at play is diverse, and its accurate prediction requires a multi-scale and multi-physics model, far beyond the current state-of-the-art. Such a model will combine techniques from fluid dynamics, kinetic theory, Langevin dynamics, and uncertainty quantification, and tackle a broad range of physics including rarefied gas dynamics, creeping flow, micro-scale evaporation, and Brownian motion.