CAREER: Aerosol transport in well-defined periodic porous metamaterials

悬浮在空气中的微小固体或液体液滴被称为“气溶胶”，它们无处不在，对我们的健康和环境有重大影响。具有某些特性的气溶胶会沉积在人的气道中，从而产生潜在的有害后果，例如传播COVID-19等空气传播疾病，或产生积极后果，例如输送药物或疫苗的吸入器。在这些例子中，肺有效地充当多孔过滤器，在吸入的气溶胶穿过复杂的气道结构时收集它们的一部分。气溶胶通过多孔结构（如肺）的运动是很难预测的，它取决于背景气流、局部多孔结构和单个气溶胶特性。该学院早期职业发展计划（Career）奖旨在通过使用具有规则和明确结构的模型多孔材料，了解气溶胶如何通过与人类肺部孔隙度相似的多孔结构。利用这种对常规多孔结构中气溶胶运动的理解，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相关的教育活动，旨在使科学管道多样化，支持公众参与科学传播，并指导具有社会意识的研究科学家。该奖项的总体目标是通过实验和计算多相方法，建立气溶胶通过定义良好的多孔晶格传输的基本理解。将研究网格内的气溶胶输送，以建立均匀网格内的预测基本关系，以及不对称和图案网格内的沉积，循环流动剖面下的沉积，以及锥形管道内的沉积。不同晶格设计中的沉积知识将在创新的动态肺模型中实现，以近似空间沉积，使用晶格结构提供吸入气溶胶的有意义的空间近似，并映射到人体肺的解剖区域。该奖项还旨在整合教育活动，增强科学传播者的能力，加强多层次的学生社区，促进学生的成功和STEM参与。该奖项代表了一种协同研究方法，以增强对周期性、明确定义的多孔结构中气溶胶动力学的机理理解，同时为STEM教育影响提供可持续和综合的方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.