Determination of maximum particle size in magnetic fluids

Resumo

Higher-order moments of particle size distribution functions are determined for magnetic fluids from analysis of initial segments of magnetization curves. It is shown that the higher-order moments calculated using approximation of real particle size distributions by the Γ distribution are strongly overestimated. Agreement between the measured and calculated moments can be radically improved by truncating maximum particle size X_max. A relation between X_max and the parameters of the Γ distribution is proposed taking into account the degree of polydispersity of a magnetic fluid. Namely, the ratio between the maximum and most probable particle diameters is equal to the ratio between the mean-square magnetic moment of a particle and its squared average magnetic moment.