Particle Size & Shape Analysis

At the Department of Earth Sciences (FALW, VU University Amsterdam), I am the responsible scientist for the particle size and shape analysis facilities:

Laser-diffraction particle size analysis

The HELOS KR (Sympatec) laser-diffraction particle sizer provides particle size measurements of suspended sediment samples in the range 0.15 to 2000 μm.

Dynamic image analysis

The QICPIC dynamic image analyser (Sympatec) combines particle size and shape analysis of suspended sediment particles with extremely high precision and accuracy. The high performance camera and data compression module supports the grabbing of up to 25 images per second, resulting in the storage of size and shape data of a few million individual particles (size range 2 to 500 μm in current setting) per sample in a few minutes time. The software offers simultaneous calculations of different particle size and shape characteristics (e.g. aspect ratio, sphericity). A particle gallery in combination with multiple filter functions supports the evaluation of the measured sediment sample, even if very large amounts of several million particles per sample are stored.