The Influence of Water Coating on the Optical Scattering Properties of Fractal Soot Aggregates
Academic Article
Overview
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
The effect of water coating of constituent monomers on the optical single-scattering properties of fractal soot aggregates is investigated numerically using core-mantle theory and approximations involving two effective medium theories. A cluster-cluster aggregation algorithm is used to numerically generate fractal aggregates, and the core-mantle Generalized Multi-particle Mie (GMM) method is used to compute the exact single-scattering properties of soot aggregates with water-coated monomers. Comparisons are then made with results obtained using approximations that combine either the GMM method or the Rayleigh-Debye-Gans (RDG) method with either the Maxwell-Garnett or the Bruggeman effective medium approximation (a total of four approximation methods). The optical properties calculated are the extinction and absorption cross sections, the single-scattering albedo, and the phase matrix of water-coated fractal aggregates; these calculations are done for two wavelengths, 0.628 m and 1.1 m. Water coating of the fractal aggregates is shown to increase the extinction and absorption cross sections, the single-scattering albedo, and forward scattering, but decrease backward scattering. The combination GMM + Maxwell-Garnett gives approximations that are quite good over a range of coating thicknesses and aggregate size. The combination GMM + Bruggeman performs less well, overestimating the extinction and absorption cross sections and underestimating the single-scattering albedo. In the case of RDG, the better combination is with the Bruggeman approximation, but the errors involved are greater than with the GMM + Maxwell-Garnett combination. Results from simple idealized calculations indicate that the differences between results with the Maxwell-Garnett and Bruggeman approximations should be even larger in cases of aerosol cores that are less absorptive than soot. 2011 08 11.
