Modeling contaminant spread in the wake of moving persons and vehicles in various environments

Moving persons and vehicles create aerodynamic wakes that contain and distribute contaminants to the environment through which the object moves. Characterizing the contamination spread from a moving object is important to understand the impact that persons and vehicles have on environments through which they move. This work is developing analytical and experimental based models to understand wake contamination footprints in atmospheric environments for Earth and planetary exploration applications. A literature review is used to document wake and plume propagation in the near field behind moving objects, with a specific focus on appropriate non-dimensional scaling of all parameters to accommodate widely varied atmospheric conditions. Contamination transport from the vehicle through the wake and to the atmosphere is then estimated based on theoretical and empirical models of the plume behaviors and notional contaminant particle size and mass. Contamination source characterization is considered for its impact on the resulting contamination footprint. The results are parameterized contamination maps that are scalable through dimensional analysis for a given environment and source. This ongoing study is also developing supplemental experimental measurements to build verification of the models for notional moving vehicle geometries.