AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Experimental Comparison of Dust Resuspension Using a Consistent Test Mechanism
YILIN TIAN, Kyung Sul, Jing Qian, Andrea R. Ferro, Clarkson University
Abstract Number: 183 Working Group: Indoor Aerosols
Abstract Human walking influences indoor air quality mainly by resuspending particles that are settled on the floor. For this study, walking-induced particle resuspension was characterized as a function of flooring type, surface dust loading, relative humidity and particle size. Distinct from previous studies, a consistent test mechanism was utilized instead of human participant to eliminate the impact of varied walking style and facilitate a systematic comparison of the influencing factors. Five types of flooring, including hardwood, vinyl, high density cut pile carpet, low density cut pile carpet and high density loop carpet, were tested with two levels of RH (30-40% and 70-80%) and surface dust loading (2 g/m$^2 and 8 g/m$^2). Resuspension rate coefficients for house dust were found to vary from 10$^(-4) h$^(-1) to 10$^(-1) h$^(-1), which is within the range of previous studies with actual human walking. The statistical analysis results show that flooring type has a significant effect on resuspension rate coefficient for all particle size bins measured, while surface dust loading is influential for particles less than 3.0 micron in size. When the results for all floorings are combined, RH itself shows little effect on particle resuspension because the direction of effect of RH is opposite for carpet and hard flooring. The interactions between RH and flooring type as well as RH and surface dust loading verify that RH should be taking into account.