NUMERICAL CALCULATION OF ELECTROSTATIC FIELD SURROUNDING A HUMAN HEAD IN VISUAL DISPLAY ENVIRONMENTS

摘要

The aim of the present study is to investigate the electrostatic field between a surface such as a video display terminal and the face of an operator. Special attention is given to the field on the surface of the face. A numerical model is employed to calculate the three-dimensional electrostatic field governed by the Laplace equation for the electric potential. The model is based on computational fluid mechanical tools and advanced computational grids in order to analyse the field around the complex shapes of a human face. The advantage of the present numerical model is a high resolution of the calculated field. The electrostatic field is investigated for two different face shapes. For person 1, a female East-Asian, a parameter study is performed for the distance between screen and face and for the screen size. Equations fitting the calculated field strength are given for nose tip, forehead and eye. For person 2, a male Caucasian, emphasis is given to the field at the surface of the face and the results are used for comparison with person 1. The results indicate that for a given face shape, as that of person 1, the field at the nose decreases as l(s)(-0.82), l(s) being the distance between screen and nose tip. For both faces very steep gradients were found close to the face. Moreover, local protrusions on the surface of the face such as the nose tip result in a very high electrostatic field strength and different face shapes yield very different overall field distributions. [References: 27]