Suppression of gel formation by spontaneous fragmentation

Abstract

In this work we study the discrete Smoluchowski equation with a multiplicative kernel and an additional term describing the spontaneous shattering of each particle into monomers at a constant rate $\lambda$. We show that the introduction of fragmentation suppresses gelation for $\lambda \ge 4$. We derive analytical expressions for the second moment and the monomer concentration $n_1(t)$. These expressions lead to a recurrence relation allowing the steady-state particle size distribution for $\lambda \ge 4$ to be calculated with machine precision. We validate our analytical and semi-analytical results via numerical simulations using a solver that employs the Fast Fourier Transform for computation of the right-hand side and a second-order Runge-Kutta method with adaptive time steps.