Radiative Properties of Numerically Generated Fractal Soot Aggregates: The Importance of Configuration Averaging

The radiative properties of numerically generated fractal soot aggregates were studied using the numerically accurate generalized multi-sphere Mie-solution method. The fractal aggregates investigated in this study contain from 10 to 600 primary particles of 30 nm in diameter. These fractal aggregates were numerically generated using a combination of the particle-cluster and cluster-cluster aggregation algorithms with fractal parameters representing flame generated soot. Ten different realizations were obtained for a given aggregate size measured by the number of primary particles. The wavelength considered is 532 nm and the corresponding size parameter of primary particle is 0.177. Attention is paid to the effect of different realizations of a fractal aggregate with identical fractal dimension, prefactor, primary particle diameter, and the number of primary particles on its orientation-averaged radiative properties. Most properties of practical interest exhibit relatively small variation with aggregate realization. However, other scattering properties, especially the vertical-horizontal differential scattering cross section, are very sensitive to the variation in geometrical configuration of primary particles. Orientation-averaged radiative properties of a single aggregate realization are not always sufficient to represent the properties of random-oriented ensemble of fractal aggregates.