Impact of necking and overlapping on radiative properties of coated soot aggregates

The impact of necking and overlapping on the radiative properties of coated soot aggregates was investigated numerically by using the Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA). The present study concerns the situations of slight overlapping between primary particles and small to moderate necking. The effects of overlapping, necking, and coating on the aggregate volume equivalent radius were presented. To show the overlapping effect, the radiative properties of aggregates consisting of N D 200 particles were evaluated with and without coating at refractive indices of m = 1.60 + 0.60i for the soot core and m = 1.46 for the coating material at four different wavelengths in the visible and near-infrared. The radiative properties of coated soot aggregates with three overlapping values of 0.05, 0.1, and 0.2 were calculated. In addition, the relationship between absorption cross-section and wavelength was illustrated at overlapping values of 0.05, 0.1, and 0.2 for uncoated and 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% coated aggregates. As overlapping and necking increased, the calculated extinction, absorption, and scattering properties also increased in the visible and near-infrared regions. It was found that the volume equivalent radii of coated aggregates increased linearly with coating thickness when the necking values were 0.40-0.50.