  We investigate aggregation and fragmentation dynamics of tracers and inertial
aggregates in random flows leading to steady state size distributions. Our
objective is to elucidate the impact of changes in aggregation rates, due to
differences in advection dynamics, especially with respect to the influence of
inertial effects. This aggregation process is, at the same time, balanced by
fragmentation triggered by local hydrodynamic stress. Our study employs an
individual-particle-based model, tracking position, velocity and size of each
aggregate. We compare the steady-state size distribution formed by tracers and
inertial aggregates, characterized by different sizes and densities. On the one
hand, we show that the size distributions change their shape with changes of
the dilution rate of the suspension. On the other hand, we obtain that the size
distributions formed with different binding strengths between monomers can be
rescaled to a single form with the use of a characteristic size for both dense
inertial particles and tracer monomers. Nevertheless, this last scaling
relation also fails if the size distribution contains aggregates that behave as
tracer-like and as inertial-like, which results in a crossover between
different scalings.
