Structure in Flocculated Dispersions

Once the attraction forces have become larger than the repulsion, and also larger than Brownian motion, particles can remain together when they collide, lying in the primary or secondary minimum discussed in Section 10.4. The resulting aggregates or floes have a very 

Considerable progress has recently been made in this area (e.g., Meakin, 1983 Weitz and Oliveria, 1984). Most of the floes do not have homogeneous internal structures. The center is usually more dense than the outer regions hence the mass does not change with the third power of the radius r as in normal objects with constant density. Still they are often self-similar in the sense that their mass m, or the number N of particles in a floe, grows as 

Ultimately growing floes can touch, thereby forming a spacefilling network of particles. This phenomenon is studied by means 

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