Miniaturized Wearable Respirable Dust Monitor (WEARDM) for Underground Coal Mines: Designs and Experimental Evaluation

This work presents the design, fabrication, and experimental evaluation of individual components of an air-microfluidic miniaturized wearable respirable dust monitor (WEARDM) that directly measures the respirable mass fraction of the dust in underground coal mines. The device uses a dual resonator gravimetric sensing approach to maintain uniform collection efficiency across the respirable particle distribution. The device is an order of magnitude smaller and less expensive than comparable devices. The WEARDM system is optimized for a low flow rate which balances low power usage and small form factor.