Table 1.

Data and findings on the formation of human thermal plume and its influences on the dispersion and transport of droplets and airborne particles in simulated and actual environments

Objectives	Subject	Methods	Key data and findings	References
Qualitative and quantitative research on human thermal plume	Human volunteers	Particle image velocimetry, computational fluid dynamics	Human thermal plume reached a maximum velocity of 0.24 m/s at 0.42 m above the head height. An approximately linear growth of plume flow rate with height was observed	Craven and Settles (2006)
Studying the effects of human thermal plume on indoor airflows and particle transport	Simulation	Computational fluid dynamics	Buoyancy driven by human thermal plume significantly pulled airflows from floor ventilation inlet toward the human body and altered the flow trajectories of airborne particles	Salmanzadeh et al. (2012)
Evaluation of key variables in the intensity of human thermal plume	Thermal manikin	Dressing a thermal human manikin with various types of clothing under different conditions	Increasing the ambient temperature could decrease the intensity of the human thermal plume. Long and loose clothing could reduce its velocity	Licina et al. (2014)
Studying the influences of human thermal plume on particle transport and distribution after emitted by a laser printer in a ventilated room	Simulation	Computational fluid dynamics	Particle concentrations were significantly higher near the breathing zone under the influence of thermal plume	Ansaripour et al. (2016)
Investigating the interactions between human thermal plume and cough flow	Simulation	Computational fluid dynamics	Human thermal plume could ascend the cough flow and elevate the droplets into upper atmosphere along the human boundary layer	Yan et al. (2019)
Investigation of human exposure to indoor airborne microplastics	Thermal manikin	Using a breathing thermal manikin to simulate human respiration	Thermal plume continuously transported microplastics from lower regions of the room into the breathing zone of the sedentary manikin	Vianello et al. (2019)
Analyzing airborne transmission of expiratory droplets in a coach bus environment	Simulation	Computational fluid dynamics	Gravity, ventilation flows and upward body thermal plumes had concurrent effects on the dispersion and final deposition of the droplets generated by seated passengers in the coach bus	Yang et al. (2020)