2022 Impact factor 1.8
Soft Matter and Biological Physics


Eur. Phys. J. E 7, 153-161 (2002)
DOI: 10.1140/epje/i200101167

Coupled aggregation and sedimentation processes: Three-dimensional off-lattice simulations

R. Leone1, G. Odriozola1, L. Mussio1, A. Schmitt2 and R. Hidalgo-Álvarez2

1  Departamento de Química Física y Matemática, Facultad de Química, Universidad de la República, 11800 Montevideo, Uruguay
2  Departamento de Física Aplicada, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, Campus de Fuentenueva, E-18071 Granada, Spain

rhidalgo@ugr.es

(Received 7 November 2001 )

Abstract
Coupled aggregation and sedimentation processes were studied by means of three-dimensional computer simulations. For this purpose, a large prism with no periodic boundary conditions for the sedimentation direction was considered. Furthermore, three equally sized and mutually excluded regions were defined inside the prism, a top, a middle and a bottom region. This allows to study the time evolution of the cluster size distribution and the cluster structure separately for each region. The mass distribution profile and the center-of-mass position were also accessed as a function of time. For the bottom region, the effects of the sediment formation on the kinetics of growth and on the cluster structure were clearly observed. The obtained results not only agree with the experimental data obtained by Allain et al. (C. Allain, M. Cloitre, M. Wafra, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 1478 (1995)) and with the simulations made by Gonzalez (A.E. Gonzalez, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1243 (2001)), but also allow to gain further insight into the details.

PACS
82.70.Dd - Colloids.
82.20.-w - Chemical kinetics and dynamics.
02.50.-r - Probability theory, stochastic processes and statistics.


© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2002