Aggregation kinetics and macroscopic properties of athermal suspension in uniaxial magnetic field

Abstract

The aggregation kinetics in a magnetic fluid emulsion as a model system under the action of an external uniform stationary magnetic field is studied experimentally. The process of structure formation is analyzed by measuring the macroscopic magnetic permeability of a three-dimensional sample of the emulsion. This makes it possible to obtain information on the aggregation kinetics in an athermal polydisperse unbounded suspension. It is shown that the emulsion macroscopic properties change has a time scale corresponding to the predictions of the hierarchical model (t*~1/(H1/2)). The dependences of the magnetic permeability relative change on dimensionless time can be collapsed onto a master curve when these dependences are normalized to their maximum value. The obtained results are discussed using a two-dimensional computational finite-difference model of suspension permeability