Flocculation is the process whereby particles (i.e., flocs) in suspension reversibly combine and separate. The process is widespread in soft matter and aerosol physics as well as environmental science and engineering. We consider a general size-struc
tured flocculation model, which describes the evolution of flocs in an aqueous environment. Our work provides a unified treatment for many size-structured models in the environmental, industrial, medical, and marine engineering literature. In particular, our model accounts for basic biological phenomena in a population of microorganisms including growth, death, sedimentation, predation, renewal, fragmentation and aggregation. Our central goal in this paper is to rigorously investigate the long-term behavior of this generalized flocculation model. Using results from fixed point theory we derive conditions for the existence of continuous, non-trivial stationary solutions. We further apply the principle of linearized stability and semigroup compactness arguments to provide sufficient conditions for local exponential stability of stationary solutions as well as sufficient conditions for instability. Abstract. The end results of this analytical development are relatively simple inequality-criteria which thus allows for the rapid evaluation of the existence and stability of a non-trivial stationary solution. To our knowledge, this work is the first to derive precise existence and stability criteria for such a generalized model. Lastly, we also provide an illustrating application of this criteria to several flocculation models.
We consider a size-structured aggregation and growth model of phytoplankton community proposed by Ackleh and Fitzpatrick [2]. The model accounts for basic biological phenomena in phytoplankton community such as growth, gravitational sedimentation, pr
edation by zooplankton, fecundity, and aggregation. Our primary goal in this paper is to investigate the long-term behavior of the proposed aggregation and growth model. Particularly, using the well-known principle of linearized stability and semigroup compactness arguments, we provide sufficient conditions for local exponential asymptotic stability of zero solution as well as sufficient conditions for instability. We express these conditions in the form of an easy to compute characteristic function, which depends on the functional relationship between growth, sedimentation and fecundity. Our results can be used to predict long-term phytoplankton dynamic
We present a multi-scale model to study the attachment of spherical particles with a rigid core, coated with binding ligands and in equilibrium with the surrounding, quiescent fluid medium. This class of fluid-immersed adhesion is widespread in many
natural and engineering settings. Our theory highlights how the micro-scale binding kinetics of these ligands, as well as the attractive / repulsive surface potential in an ionic medium effects the eventual macro-scale size distribution of the particle aggregates (flocs). The results suggest that the presence of elastic ligands on the particle surface allow large floc aggregates by inducing efficient inter-floc collisions (i.e., a large, non-zero collision factor). Strong electrolytic composition of the surrounding fluid favors large floc formation as well.
