Growth, percolation, and correlations in disordered fiber networks

This paper studies growth, percolation, and correlations in disordered fiber networks. We start by introducing a 2D continuum deposition model with effective fiber-fiber interactions represented by a parameter $p$ which controls the degree of clustering. For $p=1$, the deposited network is uniformly random, while for $p=0$ only a single connected cluster can grow. For $p=0$, we first derive the growth law for the average size of the cluster as well as a formula for its mass density profile. For $p>0$, we carry out extensive simulations on fibers, and also needles and disks to study the dependence of the percolation threshold on $p$. We also derive a mean-field theory for the threshold ne…