Summary

Collecting coarse aerosols (up to 10 microns) by diffuser and curved-tube samplers on research aircraft has been less efficient than needed, and the LTI was designed to improve sampling of such particle populations. The LTI was developed jointly by scientists from the University of Hawaii and Denver University, and ATD's Design and Fabrication Services (DFS). It employs a porous tip through which the air being sampled is drawn, with turbulence being suppressed by suction. This prevents separation of the boundary layer. The efficiency of the LTI is near enough to unity to produce reliable studies of the distributions and impacts of both mineral dust and sea salt this was demonstrated last year in test flights in the Carribbean flow by the C-130 (see ATD's ASR 2000) outfitted with the LTI and three other samplers for comparison.