Characterization of the Flow Field and Wind Speed Profiles in Microbalance Wind Tunnels for Measurement of Agent Fate
Abstract
An important goal is to model chemical warfare agent fate on environmental and interior surfaces and therefore, rigorously measured evaporation and desorption rates are required to develop equations for these transport processes. A difficult problem in environmental fate research is the assignment of a wind speed to an evaporation or desorption process for a droplet. The average wind speed is recorded, but the wind speed controlling the transport of liquid to vapor at the droplet interface at ground level is a much lower value. The wind speed profiles in several microbalance wind tunnel geometries were measured in order to assign an appropriate wind speed to the chemical agent evaporation rates measured. Both hot wire anemometry and computational fluid dynamics were employed to characterize the flow field in the microbalances. Separate inlet geometries were compared since low and high humidity air can have different inlet flow paths. The characterization of a dual microbalance with differential weight loss and differential temperature measurement capability was added to the preliminary characterization of simple beam microbalances studied previously.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA449676
Entities
People
- Daniel J. Weber
- John W. Molnar
- Mary K. Scudder
- Wendel Shuely
Organizations
- Edgewood Chemical Biological Center