AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Accurate and Adaptive Test and Evaluation of Biological Aerosol Detection Systems - The Aerosol Challenge Simulator
JAMES S. BURKE, Nigel Pomeroy, Maurice W. Walker, Virginia E. Foot, DSTL
Abstract Number: 427 Working Group: Environmental Fate of Infectious Aerosols
Abstract Bio-aerosol detection instruments need to be able to respond to aerosol clouds of biological agents against a background of particulates present in the natural environment. An advanced test capability has been developed over the past decade at Dstl. The Aerosol Challenge Simulator (ACS) enables far greater levels of control over the aerosol test parameters than previously possible. Aerosols containing simulants to biological agents can be generated using a variety of instrumentation to provide well characterized challenges on a clean background. The resulting aerosol is mixed with a background aerosol (either natural or synthetically aerosolized) to provide the test aerosol. Computer control of the independent particle filtration of the challenge and background aerosols enables standardized test profiles to be replayed against a relevant representation of the ambient aerosol. This passes into a test section for sampling with aerosol detectors and collectors.
The ACS is being used extensively at Dstl for bio-aerosol detection instrumentation tests, during which target challenge profiles that have been obtained in field trials are replicated with a high level of repeatability from test to test. The ACS has also been used to collect data for sensitivity tests of sensors, correlated with a suite of reference aerosol instrument measurements, and to acquire training and test datasets for instrument analysis algorithms.
The facility has potential application in multiple cross-disciplinary areas involving bio-aerosols and atmospheric and health related aerosols; such as supporting agricultural, urban and waste management aerosol studies, aiding the understanding of source components within fluctuating aerosols, and characterizing the response of novel prototype aerosol instrumentation.
This poster will present examples of results obtained using the ACS facility.
This work is supported by the UK MoD CBR R&D research program.