Sweating is important to human thermoregulation, thermal comfort, illness diagnosis, and hygiene product development. However, little is known about how droplets emerge and evaporate from our sweat glands. The scale of these phenomena is in-between molecular processes that drive sweat generation revealed by biochemists and macroscopic sweat rate measurements performed by physiologists. Engineers have studied evaporation across all these length scales but only in non-biological settings. This work will use three advanced imaging techniques to provide a unique view of droplets during various sweating stages. To identify the main physical mechanisms underlying sweat evaporation, high-resolution photographs and videos will be interpreted with theoretical modeling and additional experimentation with artificial sweating surfaces.
Co-PIs: Stavros Kavouras (ASU), Heather Emady (ASU), and Francois Perreault (ASU)
Funding: National Science Foundation
