Statistics of particle capture in HGMS

Previous theories of random longitudinal HGMS have considered the distribution of wire orientations relative to fluid motion and applied external field as equivalent to two-thirds of the wires being aligned orthogonal to magnetic field and flow with the remaining one third aligned parallel to field and flow and hence taking no part in the capture process. From this starting point simple statistical expressions for the particle extraction efficiency of filters have been derived. It has generally been found that the values of particle capture efficiency calculated in this way are an order of magnitude higher than those obtained by experiment. In this paper, the full implications of isotropic fibre distribution are considered regarding the performance of random filters operating in the longitudinal and in the transverse field/flow configurations.