Fragmentation and restructuring of soft-agglomerates under shear

Soft-agglomerate restructuring, break-up (or fragmentation) and relaxation are studied in a simple shear flow by a discrete element method (DEM). The agglomerates, held together by van der Waals forces, rotate in the shear flow and are stretched into nearly linear structures (fractal dimension approaches unity) until they fracture at their weakest point resulting in lognormally-shaped fragment size distributions asymptotically. Individual fragments relax in the flow towards more compact agglomerates than the parent ones. The evolution of the average number of particles per fragment is described by generalized scaling laws between shear rate, onset (time-lag) of fragmentation, asymptotic fragment mass and size consistent with experimental and theoretical studies in the literature. The initial effective fractal dimension of the agglomerates influences the final one of the fragments.