Experimental of the Distribution

and Direction of Droplet Movement

Using a High-Speed Camera

Rachmad Almi Putra , Hamdani Umar, Samsul Rizal, Maimun Syukri,

and M. Salamul Fajar

Abstract Droplets are liquids or splashes of water that are expelled through the
respiratory tract when a person talks, coughs, or sneezes. The average size of the
droplets released during sneezing is > 5 µm with a distance of < 1 m. Meanwhile,
when speaking, it is 5 µm at a distance of 1 m, which is often called nuclei or
respiratory droplets. Due to their smaller sizes and the inability to observe with the
naked eye, the direct spread of infections through these droplets is a major factor
in the increase in disease cases. Therefore, this research is focused on the set-up
of droplet observation instrumentation in the room, where the velocity of airflow is
neglected. The novelty lies in determining the size distribution of droplets produced
and examining the transmission speed when someone sneezes. The results showed
that the set-up successfully identifies the droplets expelled during sneezing. The

R. A. Putra
School of Engineering, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia
Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Samudra, Langsa, Indonesia
R. A. Putra
e-mail: rachmad.almi@unsam.ac.id
H. Umar (B) · S. Rizal
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda
Aceh, Indonesia
e-mail: hamdani@unsyiah.ac.id
S. Rizal
e-mail: samsul.rizal@unsyiah.ac.id
H. Umar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Samudra, Langsa,
Indonesia
M. Syukri
Medical Faculty, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia
e-mail: maimun_62@unsyiah.ac.id
M. S. Fajar
Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh 23111, Indonesia
e-mail: salamul@mhs.unsyiah.ac.id

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 365
Irwansyah et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on
Experimental and Computational Mechanics in Engineering, Lecture Notes in
Mechanical Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7495-5_35
366 R. A. Putra et al.

mucosal sac expands and is dispersed and retracted, which makes the ligaments
to be visible when pulled or detached from the mother’s pouch, causing the sac
to disintegrate and form droplets. Based on observations, the number of droplets
produced when sneezing is approximately 109 particles, where 39% are 5 µm and
61% are above 5 µm, with a speed of 2.08 m/s.

Keywords HSC · Droplets · PIV · Sneezing · Size

1 Introduction

Infectious diseases such as Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI), Pneumonia, Tuber-

culosis (TB), and SARS are caused by several biological factors, namely viruses,
bacteria, and parasites that are transmitted through the air. In 2020, the world was
faced with the emergence of coronavirus, often called COVID-19. It is a new variant
of the SARS-Cov 2 virus and the worst outbreak from 2002 to 2003 [1, 2]. This
pandemic is experienced in almost all countries and one of the main spreads is
through droplets [3]–[5]. Meanwhile, droplets are liquids or splashes of water that
are expelled through the respiratory tract when a person talks, coughs, or sneezes.
The average size of droplets expelled by a person when sneezing is > 5 µm with a
distance of < 1 m. When a person speaks, the size is 5 µm at a distance of 1 m [6],
which is often referred to as nuclei or respiratory droplets. Due to the smaller size of
droplets and the inability to observe with the naked eye, the direct spread of a disease
is a major factor in the increase in COVID-19 cases [5]–[7]. Patients diagnosed with
respiratory infectious diseases are generally recommended to self-isolate by staying
in a room, at home, and avoiding contact with other people, including those living
together.
Isolation measures for people with infectious diseases are also carried out in health
care facilities such as hospitals, which are called isolation rooms [6–8]. An isolation
room is a place with lower air (negative) pressure compared to the surrounding space
for patients with airborne infectious diseases. The design is aimed to direct the airflow
to the isolation room and prevent air contaminated with pathogens from entering other
rooms [9, 10]. It also aims to make the airflow in the isolation room comes out into
free air, therefore, adequate pressure, humidity, temperature, and ventilation settings
are needed [12]. One form of air disinfection in the isolation room is the droplets
released by a patient, which are mixed with the airflow. This makes the release of
air from the isolation room into free space, the risk of infecting other patients. These
include visitors and medical personnel, who are around the isolation room and even
aggravate the illness suffered by the isolated patient. Based on these conditions, an
analysis is needed to calculate the velocity of air or droplet flow and evaluate the
movement of air contaminated with pathogens in the isolation room.
A previous related investigation stated that the droplet velocity can be observed
using a High-Speed Camera (HSC). Based on the observation, it was discovered that
the average droplet velocity was 5–10 m/s when sneezing [13]. Another report was
Experimental of the Distribution and Direction of Droplet Movement … 367

also conducted on the safe distance of people suffering from COVID-19 in public
places by considering the level of aerosol concentration that varies and accumulates
through inhalation using the Monte Carlo method and obtained quantitative data
about the length of time exposure in different public spaces [14][15]. Therefore,
this research focuses on the set-up of droplet observation instrumentation in the
room, where the velocity of airflow is neglected. The novelty lies in determining
the size distribution of droplets produced and examining the transmission speed
when sneezing. The results are expected to be a benchmark as the basis for further
investigations.

2 Method

2.1 Experiment Settings

The droplets released by the subject were recorded using a High-Speed Camera
(HSC) Phantom brand model T-1340. The lighting during the shooting process was
from the GSVITEC Multi-led G8 brand LED. This type of LED was selected because
it is equipped with a choice of lighting dispersion angles in form of sheet illumination.
The droplet recording process used sheet illumination with a beam angle of 15° to
focus the light directly on the droplet and produce a clear image. The lamp power
during the recording process was 85% and was considered the main light, while the
HSC position, light source, and subject were at the same height and placed in front of
a black background. The subject position was directly opposite to the LED as a light
source and in a straight line. Similarly, the HSC position to the subject was parallel
in a straight line and perpendicular to the light source. Since the camera focus was
directed to the droplet (object), it forms an angle of 10° from the subject position
(Fig. 1).

2.2 HSC Configuration

Since the duration of droplets released by humans through sneezing ranges from 150
to 200 ms [16], HSC is needed to record the movement. Droplets were recorded at
1024 × 768 resolution at a frame rate of 1000 frames-per-sec (fps) and an exposure
time of 1000 µs. The camera position was faced 10° from the subject direction and 80°
toward the light source to reduce perspective distortion and clarify the recorded object
in form of droplets. This configuration was also carried out in previous investigations
[13, 17] with a distance of 60 cm from the camera to the subject and 90 cm to the
light source.
368 R. A. Putra et al.

Fig. 1 Set-up of the position of the droplet retrieval instrument

2.3 Image Processing

The data were analyzed using the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) method with
the Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) algorithm. Before the application of the
algorithm, PTV samples in form of HSC recordings went through several stages,
namely Sampling Rate, Pre-Processing, and Post-Processing.

2.3.1 A. Sampling Rate

The sampling rate is the number of shots taken sequentially with a maximum distance
of 1/20 s between the images. For measuring the speed of particle motion, a minimum
of two images is required to analyze the movement in the frame divided by the time
interval. The image footage is saved in Tagged Image File Format (.tiff) and the
processing is carried out starting from pre- to post-processing.
Experimental of the Distribution and Direction of Droplet Movement … 369

2.3.2 B. Pre-Processing Image

Pre-processing is the initial processing of image data from video footage to improve
image quality before analysis. This includes increasing image intensity for each
pixel, lighting and capping intensity, image acquisition, feature extraction, and image
evaluation.

2.3.3 C. Post-Processing Image

Post-processing image is a step to filter outliers by selecting a speed limit that is

determined manually. This is followed by data interpolation techniques, commonly
the nearest neighbor-interpolation. Subsequently, data exploration, which is the
appearance of the velocity vector direction of the particle motion, is carried out.

3 Result and Discussion

Observations were made on the sneezing of a male with an age of 30 years, to confirm
that the instrumentation set-up described can be used to observe the droplets released
by a person when sneezing. The result showed that the duration of sneezing is about
120 ms, which is faster than the values in previous reports [17]–[19]. Figure 2 shows
the formation of a mucosal sac when a person sneezes. The sac is formed from a fluid
with a specific level of viscosity that comes from the secretions of the respiratory
cavity mixed with saliva. The impact of air pressure makes the sac to expand and
promote dispersion. The edges of the mucosal sac retract and the ligaments become
visible when pulled or detached from the mother pouch, which occurs due to shear
stress in the fluid. The mucosal sac is assumed to be fluid in motion (dynamic), while
the surrounding air is considered to be fluid at rest (static). This is illustrated in Fig. 2.
The orange line shows the boundary layer or between the mucosal sac and the air.
It was formed because the effect of fluid viscosity still occurs. Therefore, the shear
stress that occurs in the fluid is systematically described in the equation below:
τ = FA = du dy
…(10).

Fig. 2 Illustration of the position of the mucosal sac when sneezing

370 R. A. Putra et al.

Fig. 3 Droplet size distribution

= μ du
dy
…(11).
Where the value of du/dy is the rate of deformation of the fluid and μ is the propor-
tionality factor between τ and du/dy, which depends on the viscosity. Equations (10)
and (11) indicated that the shear stress experienced by a fluid with a high viscosity
will have a higher deformation than the value of a fluid with a lower viscosity. This
causes the mucosal sac to disintegrate and form droplets that contain pathogens or
viruses with the potential to spread in the air [20].
The distribution of droplets released by a person ranges from 109 particles, where
39% is ≤ 5 µm in size and 61% more than 5 µm, which was distributed as shown in
the graph (Fig. 3). The average, smallest, and maximum droplet sizes obtained are
17 µm, 3 µm, and 127 µm, respectively.
The maximum speed of the droplet is 2.08 m/s, which is close to the value obtained
in a previous report [21], which is graphically shown in Fig. 4.
The speed is influenced by the pressure coming from the nasopharynx, assuming
the amount of pressure when everyone sneezes are the same, namely 2.19 kPa [22].
The direction of droplet flow is shown in Fig. 5.
Experimental of the Distribution and Direction of Droplet Movement … 371

Fig. 4 Graph of droplet movement speed

Fig. 5 Droplet Flow Direction

372 R. A. Putra et al.

4 Conclusion

The experimental set-up of droplet measurement and distribution using a High-Speed

Camera (HSC) was examined. The results showed that the design can observe the
droplets released from the spray and when sneezing. It was discovered that droplets
from a spray are produced by a thin layer of fluid that is centrifuged, while those
generated when sneezing are through the mucosal sac. When someone sneezes, the
sac expands and is dispersed and retracted. The effect of this deformation causes
the sac to disintegrate and form droplets. The droplet size obtained varies from 3 to
127 µm and the average size from a sneeze is approximately 17 µm, where 39% was
≤ 5 µm and 61% was more than 5 µm.

Acknowledgements This research was funded by Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan (LPDP),
managed by Indonesian Science Fund (ISF): RISPRO/KI/B1/TKL/5/15448/2020; Syiah Kuala
University: 370/UN11.2.1/PT.01.03/PNBP/2021).

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