AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Characterization of Particle Resuspension from Surfaces
BABAK NASR, Suresh Dhaniyala, Andrea R. Ferro, Goodarz Ahmadi, Sari Paikoff, Clarkson University
Abstract Number: 370 Working Group: Aerosol Physics
Abstract An emergent threat to human health is the airborne particulate release of chemical/biological agents. The initial direct exposure to these airborne particles is limited to the short time duration right after the agent is released and until it is sedimented out. A longer-term, indirect exposure is, however, possible when these particles get resuspended due to natural or anthropogenic activities. The resuspension rate of particles from surfaces depends on the properties of the particles and the surface and the operating conditions. There are a number of experimental studies on particle resuspension but analysis and comparison of their results are complicated by inconsistency in the use of test particles, surface properties, and operating conditions. In addition, researchers use a range of different measures to characterize resuspension, further complicating inter-comparison efforts. In this study, we assimilated data from a wide range of fundamental particle resuspension studies and conducted a parametric analysis to establish the dependence of particle resuspension rate on different test conditions. To further address the challenge of understanding the dependence of particle resuspension on different parameters, we developed a dynamical graphical-user-interface (GUI) system for users to visualize and analyze the data. In our presentation, we will provide details of GUI system and its capabilities and describe the results obtained from our parametric analysis of published data.