An Experimental Investigation of the Flowfield and Dust Resuspension Due to Idealized Human Walking: Disk Model

To better understand how human movement causes particles to be resuspended from the ground, we performed flow visualization and PIV measurements on idealized human walking, a disk moved normal to the ground. The flow visualization indicates that particles are resuspended on both the down step and the up step of the walking process by a purely aerodynamic mechanism. The results suggest that a wall jet formed beneath the disk is responsible for particle resuspension, whereas large scale vortices created in the wake of the disk are responsible for the rapid redistribution of the resuspended particles.