Wing Tong Leung

Particle Resuspension in a Wall-Bounded Turbulent Flow

Resuspension is of common occurrence in a wide range of industrial and environmental processes. Excessive resuspension in these processes could have a severe impact on human safety and health. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a practical, yet reasonably accurate model to describe the resuspension phenomenon. It has been identified that rolling is the dominant mechanism for particle resuspension in the presence of an air stream, be it laminar or turbulent. Existing models predict the resuspension rate by regarding particles as being resuspended once they are set in motion; only a few of these models attempt to describe the full scenario, including rolling motion and the effect of turbulence. The objective of this paper is to propose a stochastic model to simulate the resuspension rate in the presence of a near-wall turbulent stream, and where the rolling mechanism is assumed to dominate the resuspension process. The fluctuating part of the angular velocity of a rolling particle is modeled by the Langevin equation (i.e., an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process); thus, the overall angular velocity is modeled as a diffusion process. A free parameter of the proposed resuspension model is determined using data obtained from a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of the problem. Once determined, the parameter is found to be universal for different materials and different sizes of particles tested. The modeling results obtained using this parameter are found to be in good agreement with experimental data, and the model performs better compared to other models.

Detachment of Droplets in a Fully Developed Turbulent Channel Flow

Liquid aerosols deform and detach from solid surfaces under an external force. It is a familiar phenomenon in many engineering applications. This article experimentally investigates the deformation and detachment of liquid droplets on three different solid surfaces in a fully developed turbulent channel flow. It is shown that the droplets either are compressed or elongate under the turbulent flow. The elongation of the droplet due to the turbulent flow is measured and presented. When the friction velocity of the flow exceeds a critical value, the droplets slide along the surface. The critical friction velocity is found empirically to be inversely proportional to the square root of the contact diameter. The sliding velocity after detachment is also reported. It has been observed by many researchers that, when the external force is gravity or a simple shear flow, the retention force of the droplet is proportional to the difference between the cosines of the receding and advancing contact angles. As the shape of a deformed droplet is much more complex under a turbulent flow, this article discusses the applicability of the same relation to the turbulent channel flow. Copyright 2014 American Association for Aerosol Research

Comparison of the Resuspension Behavior Between Liquid and Solid Aerosols

Resuspension of an aerosol from solid surfaces is an important phenomenon. The resuspension behaviors of solid aerosols and liquid aerosols are not necessarily the same. A whole solid particle detaches from the surface when the removal force is sufficient, while a portion of a droplet may detach even if the removal force is insufficient to detach the whole droplet. The objective of this article is to compare the resuspension behaviors between liquid and solid aerosols from a solid surface. Polystyrene particles and glycerol in micron sizes were generated and deposited on substrates. Two types of experiments, centrifugal detachment and vibrational resuspension, were carried out. In the centrifuge experiment, a constant removal force field was provided. Larger droplets split into smaller portions during detachment. In terms of the fraction remaining, the adhesion of the liquid aerosol has the same order of magnitude to that of the solid particle. A theoretical analysis analogous to the case of pendent drop was carried out, and the theoretical prediction agreed well with the experimental result. In the vibration experiment, a sinusoidal force field was applied. A same fraction of the solid particle detached with a much smaller force in vibration experiment than in the centrifuge experiment, whereas no resuspension was observed for liquid droplets. The adhesive forces of the liquid and solid aerosols have the same order of magnitude in the centrifuge case, but in the vibration case their adhesive forces have much greater difference. It poses a necessity for further investigation. Copyright 2013 American Association for Aerosol Research

On Detachment of Micron Droplets Using a Centrifugal Method

Liquid drops adhering to and dislodging from solid surfaces are of common occurrence in a diverse range of industrial and environmental processes. Although tremendous effort, both experimental and theoretical, has been spent on studying the fundamental mechanisms of particle resuspension, most studies concentrated on solid particles. The detachment behaviour of drops is different from that of solid particles; drops may deform and split into smaller portions during detachment and those studies are lacking in literature, especially for small droplets (in the range of micron size). This paper studies the detachment of a droplet from a plastic substrate by a centrifugal method. Monodisperse glycerol droplets in the sizes of micron ranges were generated and deposited on the substrate. Owing to the small in size, an ultracentrifuge was employed to generate the removal forces, in both normal and tangential directions. The detachment behaviours were found different in different force directions. For the normal direction, larger droplets split into smaller portions during detachment; some portions are detached and the remains form smaller droplets on the substrate. The volume fraction that remained or detached against the removal forces was determined and the result was compared with that of the solid particle. For the tangential direction, the droplet is stationary until a high enough force field is applied at which the whole droplet is detached. The phenomena are explained by the retention force model which was previously employed in a larger drop and this research shows that the same model is potential to be applicable to a small droplet in micron size.Copyright

Detachment of droplets by air jet impingement

ABSTRACT Surface cleaning using air jets is an appropriate method to remove particles from surfaces especially when cleaning by mechanical methods is not suitable. The detachment behavior of droplets using an air jet is not necessarily the same as solid particles and there is a lack of studies regarding this behavior. In this article, the detachment of droplets on a plastic substrate by air jet impingement was investigated experimentally. Droplets of two different size ranges were impinged by an air jet with different impinging angles. For micrometer-sized droplets, a smaller horizontal velocity was required to detach large droplets. Moreover, the horizontal velocity required to detach 50% number fraction of droplets decreased when the air jet impinging angle increased. Millimeter-sized droplets split into many portions. Most portions remained on the substrate and only a few were resuspended. The remaining portions were distributed in a fan shape, with larger droplets traveling further on the substrate. A linear lower bound of traveled distance was observed. Due to the splitting and the small fraction of resuspension, it should not be expected that air jet cleaning of droplets is the same as that for solid particles. Copyright