Modeling snow crystal growth III: three-dimensional snowfakes

TL;DR

This paper presents a 3D mesoscopic model for snow crystal growth that simulates various physical snowflake forms by incorporating vapor diffusion, anisotropic attachment, and a semi-liquid boundary layer.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 3D computational model for snowflake formation that accurately reproduces diverse snowflake morphologies.

Findings

Successfully emulates a wide variety of physical snowflakes

Demonstrates the model's ability to replicate complex snowflake structures

Provides a feasible computational approach for 3D snow crystal simulation

Abstract

We introduce a three-dimensional, computationally feasible, mesoscopic model for snow crystal growth, based on diffusion of vapor, anisotropic attachment, and a semi-liquid boundary layer. Several case studies are presented that faithfully emulate a wide variety of physical snowflakes.