CAREER: Aerosol transport in well-defined periodic porous metamaterials

悬浮在空气中的微小固体或液体微滴被称为“气雾剂”，它们无处不在，对我们的健康和环境有重大影响。某些性质的气雾剂可沉积在人体呼吸道中，带来潜在的有害后果，如新冠肺炎等空气传播疾病的传播，或积极后果，如提供药物或疫苗的吸入器。在这些例子中，肺有效地充当了一个多孔过滤器，当吸入的气雾剂通过复杂的呼吸道结构时，它会收集部分吸入的气雾剂。气溶胶在肺等多孔结构中的运动是很难预测的，它取决于背景气流、局部多孔结构和个别气溶胶的性质。该学院早期职业发展计划(CALEAR)奖旨在了解气雾剂如何使用具有规则和明确结构的模型多孔材料通过具有类似于人类肺部的孔隙率的多孔结构传播。利用对常规多孔结构中气溶胶运动的这种了解，最终可能导致开发更好的可吸入药物或防止环境暴露。该奖项还将涉及一系列与科学工作有关的教育活动，这些活动寻求使科学渠道多样化，支持公众参与科学交流，并指导具有社会意识的研究科学家。该奖项的总体目标是利用实验和计算多阶段方法，通过定义明确的多孔晶格建立对气溶胶传输的基本理解。将研究晶格内的气溶胶传输，以建立均匀晶格内的预测基本关系，以及非对称和有图案的晶格内、循环流动剖面下和锥形管道内的沉积。然后，将利用各种晶格设计中的沉积知识来近似创新的动态肺模型中的空间沉积，使用晶格结构来提供映射到人类肺部解剖区域的有意义的吸入气溶胶的空间近似。该奖项还旨在整合教育活动，以增强科学传播者的能力，并加强多层次的学生社区，以促进学生的成功和STEM参与。这一奖项代表了一种协同研究方法，旨在加强对周期性、定义明确的多孔结构中气溶胶动力学的机械理解，同时发展可持续和综合的方法来解决教育STEM影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Tiny solid or liquid droplets suspended in air called ‘aerosols’ are all around us and have major impacts to our health and environment. Aerosols of certain properties can deposit in the human airway, with potential detrimental outcomes, such as the spread of airborne diseases such as COVID-19, or positive outcomes, such as inhalers that deliver medicines or vaccines. In these examples, the lung effectively acts as a porous filter, collecting some fraction of inhaled aerosols as they travel through the complex airway structure. The movement of aerosols through porous structures such as the lung is very difficult to predict and depends on the background airflow, the local porous structure, and the individual aerosol properties. This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award seeks to understand how aerosols travel through porous structures with similar porosities to the human lung using model porous materials with a regular and well-defined structure. Leveraging this understanding of aerosol movement in regular porous structures could ultimately lead to development of better inhalable medicines or protection against environmental exposures. This award will also involve a set of educational activities related to the scientific work that seek to diversify the scientific pipeline, support public engagement with scientific communication, and mentor socially aware research scientists.The overall objective of this award is to build fundamental understanding of aerosol transport through well-defined porous lattices, using both experimental and computational multiphase approaches. Aerosol transport within lattices will be studied to establish predictive fundamental relationships within uniform lattices, as well as deposition within asymmetric and patterned lattices, under cyclic flow profiles, and within tapered pipes. Knowledge of deposition within varied lattice designs will then be implemented to approximate spatial deposition in an innovative dynamic lung model, using lattice structures to provide meaningful spatial approximations of inhaled aerosols that map to anatomic regions of the human lung. This award also aims to integrate educational activities to empower scientific communicators and strengthen multilayered student communities for student success and STEM engagement. This award represents a synergistic research methodology to enhance the mechanistic understanding of aerosol dynamics within periodic, well-defined porous structures while growing a sustainable and integrated approach to educational STEM impacts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.