Laboratory Measurements of the Response of a PMS OAP-2DC

Abstract

Laboratory measurements of the response of the Particle Measuring Systems, Inc., 2DC probe have been conducted to characterize counting and sizing errors of the probe for spherical particles. Measurements of the shadow threshold intensity of a Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) 2DC probe varied from approximately 30% to 51%, depending on the photodiode, and averaged 46% for the central 16 photodiodes. Depth-of-field and sizing measurements are quite sensitive to this threshold, which is nominally considered as 50% for the 2DC probe. Response times also varied significantly, from 0.44 to 0.90 ?s. Measurements of the depth of field for known particle sizes at low velocity agreed well with published calculations at zero velocity. For particles smaller than 100 ?m, the depth of field decreased significantly with increasing airspeed due to the nonzero response time of the sensing photodiodes. The average particle size also decreased with increasing airspeed but did so in such a manner as to counteract oversizing due to out-of-focus images. At 100 m s?1, the average measured sizing error of a 100-?m particle was close to negligible, rising to approximately 5% at 500 ?m. The application of measured depth-of-field values and sizing calibrations at specific sizes to improve 2DC size distribution accuracy is nontrivial because measurement errors cause particles to be redistributed to other sizes in a complicated manner. However, when hypothetical true particle distributions were redistributed according to a distortion matrix approximated by the results of this study, the average error of uncorrected size distributions measured by the MSC 2DC probe, expressed as a sizing error, was found to be ±10% for particles larger than 125 ?m. Although these results are not strictly transferable to other 2DC probes, the methods described can be used to derive similar results for other probes.