{"id":5130,"date":"2020-05-14T22:46:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T05:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/?p=5130"},"modified":"2020-05-14T22:51:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T05:51:11","slug":"nau-bioengineer-develops-3-d-simulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/nau-bioengineer-develops-3-d-simulations\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU bioengineer develops 3-D simulations of sneezing, coughing to help motivate social distancing during COVID-19 pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

From NAU News on May 13 , 2020<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Not convinced yet that keeping your distance and wearing a mask is worth the trouble? Perhaps scientific evidence to the contrary will help.<\/p>\n

Amir Arzani<\/strong>, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is director of the\u00a0Cardiovascular Biomechanics Lab<\/a>, which studies the mechanisms behind initiation and progression of different cardiovascular diseases, developing computational models that can capture the multiscale and multiphysics nature of cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my lab, we routinely use\u00a0a\u00a03-D computer modeling technique called computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to study complex fluid flow processes,\u201d he said. \u201cWe use numerical modeling and high-performance computing to solve the fundamental\u00a0mathematical equations that govern fluid flow. Typically, we use this technique to study blood flow in diseased arteries, but more recently, we have used these advanced computer simulations to study airflow and airborne aerosol\u00a0transport in lung airways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arzani\u2019s team is now using these computer simulation techniques to study the mechanics of sneezing and coughing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have all heard about the importance of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d Arzani said. \u201cHowever, there are many questions about its effectiveness. We wanted to know whether this virus can spread during sneezing, coughing and even regular breathing. We wanted to know how wearing a mask will influence the spread, and how far apart we need to stay from one another to be safe. Does this depend on our own breathing pattern as well? Will the situation change during a windy day? These are all questions that we are trying to answer using CFD simulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arzani is planning on\u00a0developing more sophisticated models to answer these questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see an excellent opportunity here for\u00a0fundamental fluid mechanics research and how it\u00a0could be used to provide social distancing guidelines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Arzani teaches several undergraduate and graduate-level courses, including Fluid Mechanics, Advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics and Cardiovascular Fluid Mechanics. He believes the computer simulation \u201cis an excellent way to motivate undergraduate students in our fluid mechanics classes to see how what they learn is relevant in the practical world, including the current pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

This\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0shows some of the team\u2019s very preliminary 3-D simulations of sneezing. \u201cWe use an open-source finite-element software called FEniCS to study fluid flow during sneezing and couple that with\u00a0particulate matter transport due to sneezing. These 3-D\u00a0simulations were done in high resolution thanks to NAU\u2019s high-performance computing cluster, Monsoon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Arzani\u2019s work spans a variety of disciplines, including computational fluid dynamics, computational nonlinear structural mechanics, mass transport, dynamical systems, medical imaging, systems biology and multi-scale modeling.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kerry Bennett<\/strong>, Office of the Vice President for Research<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From NAU News on May 13 , 2020 Not convinced yet that keeping your distance and wearing a mask is worth the trouble? Perhaps scientific evidence to the contrary will help. Amir Arzani, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is director of the\u00a0Cardiovascular Biomechanics Lab, which studies the mechanisms behind initiation and progression of different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":267,"featured_media":5131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,29,5],"tags":[41,42,40,34],"class_list":["post-5130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineering","category-mechanical-engineering","category-service","tag-3-d-simulation","tag-amir-arzani","tag-bioengineering","tag-cardiovascular-biomechanics-lab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5133,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions\/5133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/mechanical-engineering\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}