Numerical simulation and analysis of pressure distribution and airflow speed around an airborne cloud microphysics measurements instrument

Abstract

Clouds have an important impact on Earth’s energetic balance, so measuring accurately the microphysical parameters and using them in research has become one important step in atmospheric studies. Regarding the fact that light scattering probes convert the flow rate to concentration, any wrong assumption or measurement of the flow rate can lead to incorrect results. Applying numerical simulation to an airborne cloud microphysics measurements instrument can provide information that can be measured in any point of the sampling volume, and further used in determination of microphysics parameters, providing more accurate data. Taking this into consideration, in this paper are presented the results of numerical simulation applied to Cloud Aerosol and Precipitation Spectrometer and the comparison with results reported in literature.

Keywords

• numerical simulation
• pressure distribution
• airflow speed
• cloud microphysics
• airborne measurements