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Characterization of the Structure of Agglomerate Particles
Author(s) -
Rogak Steven N.,
Flagan Richard C.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
particle and particle systems characterization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.877
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1521-4117
pISSN - 0934-0866
DOI - 10.1002/ppsc.19920090104
Subject(s) - fractal dimension , agglomerate , cluster (spacecraft) , fractal , spheres , characterization (materials science) , range (aeronautics) , scaling , projection (relational algebra) , particle (ecology) , particle size , materials science , apparent size , colloid , chemical physics , physics , statistical physics , nanotechnology , geometry , chemistry , mathematics , geology , computer science , composite material , mathematical analysis , medicine , oceanography , astronomy , optometry , programming language , algorithm
Agglomerates of uniformly sized primary spheres are found in many aerosol and colloidal systems. Such particles have been described as fractal although they possess selfsimilarity over only a narrow range of length scales. Previous work suggests that, for such objects, ideal fractal scaling laws may require substantial corrections. The problem is particularly acute for measurements of particle structure from 2d images. The relation between the structure of an agglomerate and the characteristics of its projection is investigated using simple analytical models and clusters generated by a modified cluster cluster aggregation simulation. The morphology of the simulated clusters is varied by changing the ratio of masses of the colliding clusters. The fractal dimensions D f3 of the simulated clusters were typically 10–20% higher than those measured for the projections, D f2 , even though D f3 > 2. This difference decreases as the cluster size increases. It was found that the fraction of primary particles visible in the 2d image is more sensitive to cluster size than to fractal dimension for clusters with less than several thousand primary particles.