Abstract
A computer method has been evolved to follow the coarsening behaviour of a dispersion of particles in a supporting medium. The program is applicable to any initial distribution of particle sizes and to any growth rate equations. The method has been applied to six different initial distributions coarsening according to Greenwood's equations for diffusion and interface control and according to alternative equations. The results show that the two sets of growth rate equations are unlikely to be differentiated by practicable experiments. They also show that initial distributions with large standard deviations react violently, becoming tall and narrow before slowly approaching the forms derived in the theories of Wagner and Lifshitz and Slyozov.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.