Determining Aerosol Particle Size Distribution Using Time-Resolved Laser-Induced Incandescence

Abstract

Time-resolved laser-induced incandescence is a powerful tool for determining the physical characteristics of aerosol dispersions of refractory nano-particles. In this procedure, particles within a small aerosol volume are heated with a nano-second laser pulse, and the temporal incandescence of the particles is then measured as they return to the ambient gas temperature. It is possible to infer particle size distribution from the temporal decay of the LII signal since the cooling rate of an individual particle depends on its area-to-volume ratio. This requires solving a mathematically ill-posed inverse problem, however, since the measured LII signal is due to the incandescence contributed by all particle sizes within the aerosol volume. This paper reviews techniques proposed in the literature for recovering particle size distributions from time-resolved LII data. The characteristics of this ill-posed problem are then discussed in detail, particularly the issues of solution stability and uniqueness. Finally, the accuracy and stability of each method is evaluated by performing a perturbation analysis, and the overall performance of the techniques is compared.