Floc strength models have been developed in the past to Micromechanical techniques were developed to pull apart single explain jar test results (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). In these theories, the flocs floc particles 6 to 40 mm in size in order to measure floc strengths were treated as porous but homogeneous structures. In genand fractal dimensions. Flocs were formed by aggregating aqueous eral, the rupture of a floc is classified as either ''surface precipitated calcium carbonate sols with two water-soluble polyerosion'' or ''large-scale fragmentation.'' Erosion is the sepmers. The tensile strengths ranged from 20 to 200 nN and showed aration of small particles from the floc surface, whereas no correlation with floc sizes when plotted on logarithmic scales. fragmentation refers to the splitting of flocs into pieces of Flocs created by the two flocculant systems were found to have comparable size. Theoretical models in the literature had fractal dimensions of 1.8 and 2.4 based on analysis of fragment attributed particle erosion to shearing stresses on the floc sizes. The compact flocs favored breakup by surface erosion,
whereas flocs characterized by the lower fractal dimension tended surface (9, 12), while fragmentation was thought to be to undergo large scale fragmentation. Comparison of the two polycaused by pressure gradients (tensile stresses) across the meric flocculants revealed that both the fractal dimension and the entire body (8,12). Based on these suppositions, scaling tendency for ruptured fragments to reflocculate were sensitive to relations between floc strength and floc size were derived. the polymer used.