fluids Article On the Effect of the Respiratory Droplet Generation Condition on COVID-19 Transmission Ali Hosseinpour Shafaghi 1,2, Farzad Rokhsar Talabazar 1,2 , Ali Ko¸sar 1,2,3,* and Morteza Ghorbani 2,3,4,* 1 Mechatronics Engineering Program, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Science, Sabanci University, Tuzla 34956, Istanbul, Turkey;
[email protected] (A.H.S.);
[email protected] (F.R.T.) 2 Nanotechnology Research and Application Center, Sabanci University, Tuzla 34956, Istanbul, Turkey 3 Center of Excellence for Functional Surfaces and Interfaces for Nano-Diagnostics (EFSUN), Sabanci University, Orhanli, Tuzla 34956, Istanbul, Turkey 4 Department of Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE 141 57 Stockholm, Sweden * Correspondence:
[email protected] (A.K.);
[email protected] (M.G.) Received: 19 June 2020; Accepted: 14 July 2020; Published: 16 July 2020 Abstract: Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a highly infectious viral disease and first appeared in Wuhan, China. Within a short time, it has become a global health issue. The sudden emergence of COVID-19 has been accompanied by numerous uncertainties about its impact in many perspectives. One of major challenges is understanding the underlying mechanisms in the spread of this outbreak. COVID-19 is spread similar to the majority of infectious diseases through transmission via relatively large respiratory droplets. The awareness of the dispersal of these droplets is crucial in not only improving methods for controlling the dispersion of COVID-19 droplets, but also in discovering fundamental mechanisms of its transmission. In this study, a numerical model is developed to study the motion of droplets expelled through the respiratory system.