
A Diffusion-Inertia Model for Respiratory Aerosol Deposition
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The increasing levels of air pollution have highlighted the importance of understanding particle transport and deposition, particularly for indoor pollutants such as smoke and dust. These suspended particles can be inhaled and eventually deposit inside the human respiratory system, leading to significant health risks. This phenomenon has been widely studied through experimental and numerical approaches; specifically, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) offers a powerful tool for simulating aerosol deposition in airways, using either Lagrangian or Eulerian frameworks. In order to help reduce the computational cost associated with a Lagrangian treatment of the particulate phase in turbulent flows, Zaichik et al. developed the Diffusion-Inertia Model (DIM), a simplified Eulerian approach based on a kinetic equation for the probability density function of the particle velocity distribution. The DIM has shown promise in simulating low-inertia particle transport in turbulent indoor flows. In this study, the DIM was applied to simulate particle deposition in a double bifurcation airway model, using one-way coupling with Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations for the fluid phase. The DIM and suitable boundary conditions were implemented in the open-source CFD software code_saturne. Simulations of particle deposition with a diameter of 10 μm were compared against experimental data from Oldham et al. and numerical results from Worth Longest and Vinchurkar. The findings show good agreement with the literature, highlighting the robustness and versatility of the DIM for modeling aerosol deposition in complex geometries.