Numerical Scattering Experiments on Assemblies of Clay Platelets

Small Angle Scattering (SAS) is a potentially useful technique to observe processes at the nanometre to micrometre length-scales in undisturbed wet samples of clay. This paper presents a numerical simulation of the scattering process on artificially generated clay samples to assess the ability of SAS for studying clay. The results indicate that in addition to discern the basal length-scale it also is possible to sense changes at larger scale lengths that are associated to the evolving pore space.