Experimental investigation of the airflow generated by the human foot tapping using the hot-wire anemometry

Human-walking-induced particle resuspension in indoor environments is believed to be an important source of particulate matter. Aerodynamic disturbance generated by the human foot during a gait cycle are the main driver for particle detachment and dispersion in the room. In this work, the hot-wire anemometry technique was employed to investigate the airflow generated by one phase of the human gait cycle: the foot tapping. This phase was simulated by a mechanical simulator that consists of a wooden rectangular 25 × 8 × 1.2 cm plate, and a servomotor that allows downward and upward rotations of the plate with a constant velocity. A correction procedure based on the hot-wire velocity measurements and the analytical solution of Falkner–Skan has been derived to correct the hot-wire readings in the near-wall region. Results show a sharp increase of airflow velocity in front of the simulator after the simulator rotation. Transverse hot-wire measurements downstream of the simulator show that the profile of the maximal velocities reaches a peak at a distance y = 8 × 10⁻³m from the wall. The expulsed air from the volume under the simulator propagates downstream from the foot to reach near zero velocity values at 0.15 m away from the top of the simulator.