Polydisperse collision kernels in droplet-laden turbulence with implications for rain formation

Abstract: We study the role of turbulence in enhancing the collisions of droplets within the cloud droplet bottleneck range. To this end, we perform direct numerical simulations of polydisperse inertial particles suspended in three-dimensional turbulence at high Reynolds number. Our analysis reveals that polydispersity enhances collisions of light droplets, but attenuates collisions at larger Stokes numbers by reducing the degree of inertial clustering and weakening the sling effect. We present a novel parameterization for the bidisperse collision kernel which blends the mechanisms related to inertial clustering and the sling effect with polydispersity. We then demonstrate that the droplet size distribution of typical cloud droplets is effectively broadened by turbulence and that droplet growth may be accelerated significantly by turbulent intermittency--a condition that the here provided theoretical contemplations in conjunction with recent measurements in clouds suggest is likely.