Growth Kinetics of the Homogeneously Nucleated Water Droplets: Simulation Results

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to analyze the growth kinetics of homogeneously nucleated water droplets across a range of temperatures, revealing a unified growth law characterized by accelerated power-law growth.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the temperature-independent growth law of water droplets using coarse-grained simulations and statistical analysis.

Findings

Growth law is unified across temperatures.

Droplet growth accelerates and follows a power law.

Growth behavior is characterized by mean-first-passage-time analysis.

Abstract

The growth of homogeneously nucleated droplets in water vapor at the fixed temperatures T=273, 283, 293, 303, 313, 323, 333, 343, 353, 363 and 373 K (the pressure $p=1$ atm.) is investigated on the basis of the coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation data with the mW-model. The treatment of simulation results is performed by means of the statistical method within the mean-first-passage-time approach, where the reaction coordinate is associated with the largest droplet size. It is found that the water droplet growth is characterized by the next features: (i) the rescaled growth law is unified at all the considered temperatures and (ii) the droplet growth evolves with acceleration and follows the power law.