From August to December 2020 the PCA team were working in collaboration with la Universidad de Los Andes in supporting students who were developing innovative, improved mask designs for minimising viral spread on public transport as part of their Proyecto Intermedio.
The project spanned 16 weeks broken down into 4×4 week sprints with a review with the PCA team occurring at the end of each sprint. Five teams of four students partook in the project. Designs from teams 1 and 3 are shown in the pictures below.
Mask Design – Group 1 
Mask Design – Group 3
The students followed robust engineering design and evaluation processes, the latter of which permitted quantitative performance testing of their designs against benchmark masks. The tests included measurements of particulate dispersal, CO2 build-up, mask temperature during use and user adjustment. Extracts of the particulate tests are shown in the pictures below.
Group 1 – Particulate Test 
Group 3 – Particulate Test
A video demonstrating the development and evaluation processes will follow in a blog post soon!
The unit lead for Proyecto Intermedio @ Uniandes is Luis Ernesto Muñoz Camargo. For more information please contact the PCA team!