pyrcel.aerosol.dist_to_conc

pyrcel.aerosol.dist_to_conc(dist, r_min, r_max, rule='trapezoid')

Converts a swath of a size distribution function to an actual number concentration.

Aerosol size distributions are typically reported by normalizing the number density by the size of the aerosol. However, it’s sometimes more convenient to simply have a histogram of representing several aerosol size ranges (bins) and the actual number concentration one should expect in those bins. To accomplish this, one only needs to integrate the size distribution function over the range spanned by the bin.

Parameters:
distobject implementing a pdf() method

the representation of the size distribution

r_min, r_maxfloat

the lower and upper bounds of the size bin, in the native units of dist

rule{‘trapezoid’, ‘simpson’, ‘other’} (default=’trapezoid’)

rule used to integrate the size distribution

Returns:
float

The number concentration of aerosol particles the given bin.

Examples

>>> dist = Lognorm(mu=0.015, sigma=1.6, N=850.0)
>>> r_min, r_max = 0.00326456461236 0.00335634401598
>>> dist_to_conc(dist, r_min, r_max)
0.114256210943