Identification

Title

Kinematic and dynamic collision statistics of cloud droplets from high-resolution simulations

Abstract

We study the dynamic and kinematic collision statistics of cloud droplets for a range of flow Taylor microscale Reynolds numbers (up to 500), using a highly scalable hybrid direct numerical simulation approach. Accurate results of radial relative velocity (RRV) and radial distribution function (RDF) at contact have been obtained by taking advantage of their power-law scaling at short separation distances. Three specific but inter-related questions have been addressed in a systematic manner for geometric collisions of same-size droplets (of radius from 10 to 60 m) in a typical cloud turbulence (dissipation rate at 400 cm2 s-3). Firstly, both deterministic and stochastic forcing schemes were employed to test the sensitivity of the simulation results on the large-scale driving mechanism. We found that, in general, the results are quantitatively similar, with the deterministic forcing giving a slightly larger RDF and collision kernel. This difference, however, is negligible for droplets of radius less than 30m. Secondly, we have shown that the dependence of pair statistics on the flow Reynolds number Rj or larger scale fluid motion is of secondary importance, with a tendency for this effect to saturate at high enough Rj leading to Rj-independent results. Both DNS results and theoretical arguments show that the saturation happens at a smaller R- for smaller droplets. Finally, since most previous studies of turbulent collision of inertial particles concerned non-sedimenting particles, we have specifically addressed the role of gravity on collision statistics, by simultaneously simulating collision statistics with and without gravity. It is shown that the collision statistics is not affected by gravity when a < ac, where the critical droplet radius ac is found to be around 30 m for the RRV, and around 20 m for the RDF. For larger droplets, gravity alters the particle-eddy interaction time and significantly reduces the RRV. The effect of gravity on the RDF is rather complex: gravity reduces the RDF for intermediate-sized droplets but enhances the RDF for larger droplets. In addition, we have studied the scaling exponents of both RDF and RRV, and found that gravity modifies the RDF scaling exponents for both intermediate and large particles, in a manner very similar to the effect of gravity on the RDF at contact. Gravity is shown to cause the scaling exponents for RDF and RRV to level off for large droplets, in contrast to diminishing exponents for non-sedimenting particles.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7xw4knj

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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Temporal reference

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-04-01T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

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