About randomness of aerosol size distributions

S. Lekhtmakher*, M. Shapiro

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

All aerosol formation and evolution processes, such as nucleation, condensation, fragmentation, etc., are understood and rationalized via fundamental probabilistic concepts such as probabilities of collision, coagulation, dispersion, etc. Therefore all theoretical size distribution functions (lognormal, modified gamma distribution, self-preserving particle size distribution for Brownian coagulation, etc.) are in fact size probability density functions pdf(r). Any (e.g., measured) size distribution f(r) of an aerosol system is some random realization of its pertinent size probability density function pdf(r). When pdf(r) is viewed as a continuous function, the corresponding size distribution vanishes almost everywhere excluding some randomly set of sizes where f(r)=1. We investigate proximity between f(r) and pdf(r) in finite size intervals and derive expressions for estimation of the standard deviations of several aerosol size-dependent properties arising from randomness of f(r).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1459-1467
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Aerosol Science
Volume36
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2005
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Moments
  • Probability density function
  • Size distribution
  • Standard deviation

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