Microplastics are abundant in aquatic environments and are an emerging environmental concern. The prediction of their settling velocities is central to predictions of the residence time and concentration depth profiles of microplastics in aquatic environments. The main scientific challenge in improving the current understanding of the settling motions of microplastics is that existing drag models are deficient at reasonably predicting the settling velocities of various microplastics, especially microplastic fibers. This is because the shape factors used in the existing drag models cannot morphologically distinguish fibers from fragments and films. In this study, a new shape factor, specifically the Aschenbrenner shape factor, is proposed as a vehicle to explicitly distinguish among the morphologies of fibers, films, and fragments. With this new shape factor, a new drag model is developed and then systematically evaluated against the unique set of data provided by new experiments conducted in this study along with four other published data sets in the literature. The proposed model allows the prediction of the terminal settling velocity of microplastic fibers more accurately than existing drag models. Moreover, the new model has also shown its applicability to microplastic films and fragments. Notwithstanding, the new model appears deficient at reasonably predicting the terminal settling velocity of weathered microplastics in the field, which requires further investigations.
Keywords: aquatic environment; drag model; microplastic fibers; settling velocity; shape dependence.