AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Water Vapor Forming Aerosols on Solid Precursor Particles
DONGUK SUH, Kenji Yasuoka, Keio University
Abstract Number: 388 Working Group: Aerosol Physics
Abstract Molecular dynamics was used to simulate aerosol growth from water vapor. This is an important topic because solid particles in the atmosphere directly influence air quality. Seed particles with various shapes and sizes were inserted into multiple supersaturated water vapor systems. The objective is to find how the shape of particles from gas emissions will affect heterogeneous nucleation. A constant number, volume, temperature ensemble was used. Two different seed configurations (sphere and cube) made of aluminum were investigated. Three different sizes were tested for each shape. The Yasuoka-Matsumoto method was used to calculate how quickly condensation occurs on the particle surface. Previous studies have shown that though the different shapes have similar surface areas, condensation is faster for the cube by several factors. This result is consistent with monatomic vapor systems. The findings show that the heterogeneous nucleation rate changes simply by altering the precursor solid seed shape.