A team from Edinburgh and Warwick Universities, UK, developed a pioneering method to simulate how microscopic particles move through the air, according to a study published in the Journal of Computational Physics. The authors believe this could boost efforts to combat air pollution.
Small particles found in exhaust fumes and other forms of air pollution can cause serious health problems such as stroke, heart disease, and cancer. However, understanding how they move is notoriously difficult.
Now, researchers have developed a new computer model that significantly improves the accuracy and efficiency of simulating how nanoparticles behave in the air. This means that simulations that currently take weeks to run could be completed in hours. According to the authors, a better understanding of how these particles behave could lead to more precise ways of monitoring air pollution.
The team used the UK’s national supercomputer ARCHER2 to create a method that allows a key factor governing how particles travel – known as the drag force – to be calculated up to 4,000 times faster than existing techniques. The key to this approach is to model how air flows around nanoparticles.
The method involves a mathematical solution based on how air disturbances caused by nanoparticles fade with distance. When applied to the model, researchers can zoom in much closer to particles without compromising accuracy. This differs from current methods, which simulate large areas of surrounding air to mimic undisturbed airflow and require far more computing power. The team says that by enabling fast and precise simulations at the nanoscale, the new approach could help better predict how these particles will behave inside the body.
This advance could help develop better air pollution monitoring tools and design nanoparticle-based technologies, such as lab-made particles for targeted drug delivery.
“Airborne particles in the nanoscale range are some of the most harmful to human health – but also the hardest to model. Our method allows us to simulate their behavior in complex flows far more efficiently, which is crucial for understanding where they go and how to mitigate their effects,” said Dr. Giorgos Tatsios from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering.
“This approach could unlock new levels of accuracy in modelling how toxic particles move through the air – from city streets to human lungs – as well as how they behave in advanced sensors and cleanroom environments,” concluded Professor Duncan Lockerby, from the University of Warwick’s School of Engineering.
Tatsios G, Vasileiadis N, Gibelli L, Borg M, Lockerby D. A far-field boundary condition for measuring drag force on micro-nano particles. Journal of Computational Physics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2025.114034