SELF SIMILARITY IN SWELLING SYSTEMS: FRACTAL PROPERTIES OF PEAT

Sphagnum peat gives an example of a swelling system with a self-similar structure in sufficiently wide range of scales. The surface fractal dimension, dfs, has been calculated by means of thermodynamic method on the basis of water adsorption and capillary equilibrium measurements. This method makes possible the exploration of the self-similarity in the scale range over at least 4 decimal orders of magnitude from 1 nm to 10 μm. In a sample explored, two ranges of fractality have been observed: dfs ≈ 2.55 in the range 1.5–80 nm and dfs ≈ 2.42 in the range 0.25–9 µm.