453 research outputs found
A wind tunnel investigation of the shape of uncharged raindrops in the presence of an external, electric field
Results of a wind tunnel experiment in which electrically uncharged water drops of 500 to 3000 microns equivalent radius are freely suspended in the vertical air stream of the UCLA cloud tunnel are presented. During this suspension the drops were exposed to external vertical electric fields of 500 to 8,000 volts/cm. The change in drop shape with drop size and electric field strength was noted and is discussed in the light of theoretical work cited in the literature which unfortunately does not take into account the effects of air flow past the drop. The wind tunnel study is documented by stills from a 16 mm film record that demonstrates the shape of water drops in response to both hydrodynamic and electric forces
Coagulation kinetics beyond mean field theory using an optimised Poisson representation
Binary particle coagulation can be modelled as the repeated random process of
the combination of two particles to form a third. The kinetics can be
represented by population rate equations based on a mean field assumption,
according to which the rate of aggregation is taken to be proportional to the
product of the mean populations of the two participants. This can be a poor
approximation when the mean populations are small. However, using the Poisson
representation it is possible to derive a set of rate equations that go beyond
mean field theory, describing pseudo-populations that are continuous, noisy and
complex, but where averaging over the noise and initial conditions gives the
mean of the physical population. Such an approach is explored for the simple
case of a size-independent rate of coagulation between particles. Analytical
results are compared with numerical computations and with results derived by
other means. In the numerical work we encounter instabilities that can be
eliminated using a suitable 'gauge' transformation of the problem [P. D.
Drummond, Eur. Phys. J. B38, 617 (2004)] which we show to be equivalent to the
application of the Cameron-Martin-Girsanov formula describing a shift in a
probability measure. The cost of such a procedure is to introduce additional
statistical noise into the numerical results, but we identify an optimised
gauge transformation where this difficulty is minimal for the main properties
of interest. For more complicated systems, such an approach is likely to be
computationally cheaper than Monte Carlo simulation
Relationships between giant sea salt particles and clouds inferred from aircraft physicochemical data
The water supercooled regime as described by four common water models
The temperature scale of simple water models in general does not coincide
with the natural one. Therefore, in order to make a meaningful evaluation of
different water models a temperature rescaling is necessary. In this paper we
introduce a rescaling using the melting temperature and the temperature
corresponding to the maximum of the heat capacity to evaluate four common water
models (TIP4P-Ew, TIP4P-2005, TIP5P-Ew and Six-Sites) in the supercooled
regime. Although all the models show the same general qualitative behavior, the
TIP5P-Ew appears as the best representation of the supercooled regime when the
rescaled temperature is used. We also analyze, using thermodynamic arguments,
the critical nucleus size for ice growth. Finally, we speculate on the possible
reasons why atomistic models do not usually crystalize while the coarse grained
mW model do crystallize.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
Numerical computations of facetted pattern formation in snow crystal growth
Facetted growth of snow crystals leads to a rich diversity of forms, and
exhibits a remarkable sixfold symmetry. Snow crystal structures result from
diffusion limited crystal growth in the presence of anisotropic surface energy
and anisotropic attachment kinetics. It is by now well understood that the
morphological stability of ice crystals strongly depends on supersaturation,
crystal size and temperature. Until very recently it was very difficult to
perform numerical simulations of this highly anisotropic crystal growth. In
particular, obtaining facet growth in combination with dendritic branching is a
challenging task. We present numerical simulations of snow crystal growth in
two and three space dimensions using a new computational method recently
introduced by the authors. We present both qualitative and quantitative
computations. In particular, a linear relationship between tip velocity and
supersaturation is observed. The computations also suggest that surface energy
effects, although small, have a larger effect on crystal growth than previously
expected. We compute solid plates, solid prisms, hollow columns, needles,
dendrites, capped columns and scrolls on plates. Although all these forms
appear in nature, most of these forms are computed here for the first time in
numerical simulations for a continuum model.Comment: 12 pages, 28 figure
Ice Formation on Kaolinite: Insights from Molecular Dynamics Simulations
The formation of ice affects many aspects of our everyday life as well as
technologies such as cryotherapy and cryopreservation. Foreign substances
almost always aid water freezing through heterogeneous ice nucleation, but the
molecular details of this process remain largely unknown. In fact, insight into
the microscopic mechanism of ice formation on different substrates is difficult
to obtain even via state-of-the-art experimental techniques. At the same time,
atomistic simulations of heterogeneous ice nucleation frequently face
extraordinary challenges due to the complexity of the water-substrate
interaction and the long timescales that characterize nucleation events. Here,
we have investigated several aspects of molecular dynamics simulations of
heterogeneous ice nucleation considering as a prototypical ice nucleating
material the clay mineral kaolinite, which is of relevance in atmospheric
science. We show via seeded molecular dynamics simulations that ice nucleation
on the hydroxylated (001) face of kaolinite proceeds exclusively via the
formation of the hexagonal ice polytype. The critical nucleus size is two times
smaller than that obtained for homogeneous nucleation at the same supercooling.
Previous findings suggested that the flexibility of the kaolinite surface can
alter the time scale for ice nucleation within molecular dynamics simulations.
However, we here demonstrate that equally flexible (or non flexible) kaolinite
surfaces can lead to very different outcomes in terms of ice formation,
according to whether or not the surface relaxation of the clay is taken into
account. We show that very small structural changes upon relaxation
dramatically alter the ability of kaolinite to provide a template for the
formation of a hexagonal overlayer of water molecules at the water-kaolinite
interface, and that this relaxation therefore determines the nucleation ability
of this mineral
Modes of Growth in Dynamic Systems
Regardless of a system's complexity or scale, its growth can be considered to
be a spontaneous thermodynamic response to a local convergence of down-gradient
material flows. Here it is shown how growth can be constrained to a few
distinct modes that depend on the availability of material and energetic
resources. These modes include a law of diminishing returns, logistic behavior
and, if resources are expanding very rapidly, super-exponential growth. For a
case where a system has a resolved sink as well as a source, growth and decay
can be characterized in terms of a slightly modified form of the predator-prey
equations commonly employed in ecology, where the perturbation formulation of
these equations is equivalent to a damped simple harmonic oscillator. Thus, the
framework presented here suggests a common theoretical under-pinning for
emergent behaviors in the physical and life sciences. Specific examples are
described for phenomena as seemingly dissimilar as the development of rain and
the evolution of fish stocks.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, including appendi
Large Deviation Analysis of Rapid Onset of Rain Showers
Rainfall from ice-free cumulus clouds requires collisions of large numbers of microscopic droplets to create every raindrop. The onset of rain showers can be surprisingly rapid, much faster than the mean time required for a single collision. Large-deviation theory is used to explain this observation
Kinetics of self-induced aggregation of Brownian particles: non-Markovian and non-Gaussian features
In this paper we have studied a model for self-induced aggregation in
Brownian particle incorporating the non-Markovian and non-Gaussian character of
the associated random noise process. In this model the time evolution of each
individual is guided by an over-damped Langevin equation of motion with a
non-local drift resulting from the local unbalance distributions of the other
individuals. Our simulation result shows that colored nose can induce the
cluster formation even at large noise strength. Another observation is that
critical noise strength grows very rapidly with increase of noise correlation
time for Gaussian noise than non Gaussian one. However, at long time limit the
cluster number in aggregation process decreases with time following a power
law. The exponent in the power law increases remarkable for switching from
Markovian to non Markovian noise process
Generalized dynamical density functional theory for classical fluids and the significance of inertia and hydrodynamic interactions
We study the dynamics of a colloidal fluid including inertia and hydrodynamic
interactions, two effects which strongly influence the non-equilibrium
properties of the system. We derive a general dynamical density functional
theory (DDFT) which shows very good agreement with full Langevin dynamics. In
suitable limits, we recover existing DDFTs and a Navier-Stokes-like equation
with additional non-local terms.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 4 supplementary movie files, I supplementary pd
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