Physiological measurements of the human coughs and sneezes

The physical parameters of the human cough and sneeze, and how they affect the transmission of pathogens through the sir still remains relatively unknown. This fact when considering the effect airborne transmission of disease has had over the history of mankind is astonishing. This thesis intends to provide further understanding of the flow characteristics within the human upper respiratory tract, in conjunction with the design of a coughing machine to reliably reproduce the human cough for medical research. A result of the time sensitive nature of this report. a focus been to set to the air flow with the upper respiratory tract during a cough via 2D simulation. The results gathered through computational fluid dynamics (CFD), identify key flow patterns and enable future iterations of the coughing machine to be refined; producing results closer to that of a human cough. It is hoped that this project will lead to the creation of a coughing machine that can be used in research of the different physical parameters of the cough, and what effect these have on outcomes and transmissibility.