Monday, November 5, 2007 - 12:45 PM
100b

Structural Influence on the Drag of Fractal Aggregates

Christian Binder and Wolfgang Peukert. Chemical and Bio-Engineering, Institue of Particle Technology, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Cauerstr. 4, Erlangen, Germany

Aggregates typically formed in aerosol processes have a fractal dimension of Df=1.85. These aggregates suspended in a fluid flow have a behavior dependent on their structure, very different from the behaivor of a volume equivalent sphere in a fluid. The drag is considerably changing with increasing particle number and the settling behavior changes too, especially when the aggregates have enough time to relax into a quasi-equilibrium state and follow the streamlines. Simulation of the settling of such aggregates consisting of equally sized spheres generated by a Monte Carlo method using diffusion limited cluster-cluster aggregation has been performed on the basis of the Stokesian Dynamics method developed by Bossis and Brady, yielding approximations of the drag force in dependency on the aggregate number and the projected area. The dependency of the settling velocity and the drag on the structure of random aggregates will be shown by correlations with parameters characterizing the morphology of each aggregate.