Assessing the actual size distribution of atmospheric aerosols collected with a cascade impactor

International audienceA set of elemental mass-particle size distributions is obtained from a low volume cascade impactor whose characteristics are discussed. The data processing used [Puttock's data inversion fitting technique; Puttock, J. S. (1981) Atmos. Envir. 15, 1709], shows that bounce-off can severely affect the interpretation of data when the ambient aerosol presents a coarse mode of dust particles (D > 2 #m). This study proposes an improvement of the fitting method, for correcting experimental mass-particle size distributions for these particle bouncing effects when usual preventive procedures cannot be applied. The bounce-off contribution to the final filter of the impactor could be estimated by a microscopic examination and compared to the one predicted by the method developed in this work