AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
Numerical Study of Miniature Plate Differential Mobility Analyzers (Mini-plate DMAs)
THAMIR ALSHARIFI, Da-Ren Chen, Virginia Commonwealth University
Abstract Number: 152 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract The geometrical effects on the transfer function of miniature plate DMAs (mini-plate DMAs) were systematically studied in this work for non-diffusive particles. COMSOL was utilized to set up the numerical model. Prior to the parametric study, the model was validated by the comparison with the experimental data obtained in the work of Liu and Chen (2016). The studied parameters include the aspect ratio and the cross-sectional area of particle sizing cross section (i.e., the width to height), aerosols entrance/exit slit ratio, and the ratio of aerosol to sheath flow rates (β).
Our study shows that, because of the presence of side walls, the DMA transfer function was deteriorated as the aspect ratio was decreased to less than 8%. The opening of aerosols entrance/exit slits (relative to the width of DMA sizing zone) is also of importance on the performance of mini-plate DMAs. The aerosol entrance angle becomes important in the cases with less aerosol entrance slit opening. The effect of other geometrical parameters, such as, the cross-sectional area of DMA sizing zone, on the DMA performance was not observed. The detail of this study will be present in this talk.