Fractal packing of nanomaterials

TL;DR

This paper investigates how mechanical processing like fragmentation influences the fractal packing structure of nanomaterial agglomerates, revealing convergence to a universal structure independent of initial formation processes.

Contribution

It introduces a model combining fragmentation and ballistic agglomeration, showing the resulting structure's fractal nature and the relation between size distribution and fractal dimension.

Findings

Packing converges to a statistically invariant fractal structure.

Fragmentation leads to a power-law size distribution of fragments.

A scaling relation links the power-law exponent to the fractal dimension.

Abstract

Cohesive particles form agglomerates that are usually very porous. Their geometry, particularly their fractal dimension, depends on the agglomeration process (diffusion-limited or ballistic growth by adding single particles or cluster-cluster aggregation). However, in practice, the packing structure depends not only on the initial formation but also on the mechanical processing of the agglomerate after it has grown. Surprisingly, the packing converges to a statistically invariant structure under certain process conditions, independent of the initial growth process. We consider the repeated fragmentation on a given length scale, followed by ballistic agglomeration. Examples of fragmentation are sieving with a given mesh size or dispersion in a turbulent fluid. We model the agglomeration by gravitational sedimentation. The asymptotic structure is fractal up to the fragmentation length scale, and the fragments have a power-law size distribution. A scaling relation connects the power law and the fractal dimension.