The Collision of Nonspherical Aerosol Particles with Small Evaporating Water Drops

Abstract

Studies in the collision efficiencies of aerosol particles with water drops have generally assumed that the particles are spherical, even though ambient aerosol particles may tend to be nonspherical. The present theoretical study estimates the effects of nonspherical particle rotation in shear flow and shape dependency of the thermophoretic force in the computation of collision efficiencies of small evaporating water droplets. The results obtained show considerable differences between collision efficiencies of spherical and nonspherical particles of equivalent Stokes radii.