LAUSR

ABSTRACT The new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is rapidly spreading across communities around the world. Respiratory droplet transmission is a common transmission route for many airborne diseases, including novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Wearing the face mask prevents respiratory droplet transmission. Both face mask leakage and non-use of the face mask under high-speed wind conditions can increase the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The respiratory droplets’ behavior during sneezing or coughing (i.e., the size and the distance between droplets) depends on face mask wearing. The respiratory droplets during coughing and sneezing break apart into extremely small respiratory droplets (i.e., cloud of aerosol) upon interaction with the high-speed wind condition. The volume-of-fluid (VOF) method has been used to study the deformation and breakup of a single respiratory droplet placed in high-speed wind flow in the presence of smaller neighboring respiratory droplets. The effect of the diameter of respiratory droplets and the distance between them on the breakup mechanism has been investigated using open-source field operation and manipulation (OpenFOAM) libraries. The results are presented for the dimensionless distance and the normalized diameter of the secondary respiratory droplet in the ranges of 2 to 6 and 0.4 to 0.8, respectively. According to the results of simulations, the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 increases with a decrease in respiratory droplet breakup time. In addition, the effects of ambient relative humidity and temperature on the cloud of respiratory particles were analyzed.