Abstract

Ocean-particle sizes range from submicrometers to tens of micrometers and roughly follow an inverse-power-law distribution. The abundance of small particles causes most light-scattering techniques for particle-size measurement to suffer from instability or inaccuracy. This paper describes a compact instrument that determines the number density of particles of 1-50μm in size by measuring near-forward scattering (< 3.5°). The intensity data is inverted by a modified Phillips-Twomey method to obtain the size distribution. This technique is stable, accurate, and efficient in the size range of interest. The instrument performs well when applied to samples of simulated sea water. The simple design of the instrument, in conjunction with the robustness of the inversion algorithm, makes it a strong candidate for development into an in situ, expendable instrument.

© 1990 Optical Society of America