Partic. vol. 3 no. 4 pp. 237-239 (August 2005)
doi: 10.1016/S1672-2515(07)60194-8

Research Note

Power law distribution and self-organized criticality of dispersed particles

Degang Ma, Lihe Chai^*

lhchai@tju.edu.cn

Abstract

Research on particulate characteristics has been an important frontier in physics and chemistry during the past decades. It has however been mostly focused on granular materials with short-range interactions. In this work, it was found that the power law of particle size distribution applied to the long-range interacting system of floating dust in air, from which we deduced that self-organized criticality might hold for floating dust just as granular materials with short-range interactions. This feature may reveal underlying kinetic mechanisms, important in dispersed particle systems. In industry, power law of size distribution of dispersed particles can be used to investigate the change of dust size, and the power law parameter could be taken as an important index for dust separation.

Keywords

dispersed particle; floating dust; self-organized criticality; power law