Measuring the exhaled breath of a manikin and human subjects.

ABSTRACT

Due to scarcity of accurate information and available data of actual human breathing, this investigation focuses on characterizing the breathing dynamic process based on the measurement of healthy human subjects. The similarities and differences between one breathing thermal manikin and the human subjects, including geometry and breathing functions, were thoroughly studied. As expected, actual human breathing is more complicated than that of the manikin in terms of airflow fluctuations, individual differences, and exhaled flow directions. The simplification of manikin mouth structure could result in overestimated exhaled velocity and contaminant concentration. Furthermore, actual human breathing appears to be relatively stable and reproducible for an individual person in several conditions and is also accompanied by some uncertainties simultaneously. The averaged values are used to analyze the overall characteristics of actual human breathing. There are different characteristics of the exhaled breath between male and female subjects with or without wearing a nose clip. The experimental results obtained from the measurement of human subjects may be helpful for manikin specification or validation and accuracy assessment of CFD simulations.