Predicting the Transport Properties of Aerosol Particles in Creeping Flow from the Continuum to the Free Molecule Regime

This method is an extension of Kirkwood-Riseman theory to the transition regime, using an appropriate model for interactions between the individual spheres in an aggregate. This dissertation also describes the application of this extended Kirkwood-Riseman (EKR) method to a number of problems related to aerosol transport, including computation of the scalar translational and rotational friction coefficients of aggregates formed by diffusion-limited processes, analysis of the effects of alignment on particle migration in an electric field, and the strength of interactions between particles due to their effects on the surrounding fluid flow field.

In each of these applications, results from the EKR method are in good agreement with published experimental data and computational results. EKR results also demonstrate that particle translational and rotational behavior becomes more continuum-like as both primary particle size and the number of spheres in the aggregate increase. Using these results, new correlations have been developed for the translational and rotational friction coefficients of aggregates formed by diffusion-limited processes (e.g.~soot); these correlations are more accurate than the empirical models currently available in the literature.