Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2022) 137: 1
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02162-9

Review

A review on the transmission of COVID-19 based on cough/sneeze/breath flows

¹ Mechanical Engineering Department, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Al Khobar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
² Mechanical Engineering Department, Beirut Arab University, Tripoli, Lebanon
³ School of Manufacturing and Automation, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Calgary, Canada
⁴ Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, 2007, Sydney, NSW, Australia
⁵ LASIE, University of La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France

^a melhassan@pmu.edu.sa

Received: 5 July 2021
Accepted: 8 November 2021
Published online: 10 December 2021

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has recently had a dramatic impact on society. The understanding of the disease transmission is of high importance to limit its spread between humans. The spread of the virus in air strongly depends on the flow dynamics of the human airflows. It is, however, known that predicting the flow dynamics of the human airflows can be challenging due to different particles sizes and the turbulent aspect of the flow regime. It is thus recommended to present a deep analysis of different human airflows based on the existing experimental investigations. A validation of the existing numerical predictions of such flows would be of high interest to further develop the existing numerical model for different flow configurations. This paper presents a literature review of the experimental and numerical studies on human airflows, including sneezing, coughing and breathing. The dynamics of these airflows for different droplet sizes is discussed. The influence of other parameters, such as the viscosity and relative humidity, on the germs transmission is also presented. Finally, the efficacy of using a facemask in limiting the transmission of COVID-19 is investigated.