Physical improvements to a mesoscopic cellular automaton model for three-dimensional snow crystal growth

Abstract

We motivate and derive the dynamical rules for a computationally feasible three-dimensional cellular automaton model of snow crystal growth. The model improves upon points of weak physical connections identified in other similar models which have produced morphological features observed in many snow crystal photographs. A systematic survey of the morphologies resulting from our model illustrates the degree to which these features persist in our results, and the trends that appear as model parameters are varied.