Bond percolation and conduction in random and regular networks: topological effects at low coordination numbers

Abstract

Earlier workers have shown that percolation and conductivity properties of 14-coordinated random and regular networks in 3D are essentially indistinguishable. This work examines the generality of this result for networks of low coordination (>or=3). The critical percolation exponents, determined by finite-size scaling, are found to be independent of topology and coordination in agreement with existing literature values. However, differences in the percolation threshold, conductivity, and cluster distributions increase with decreasing coordination suggesting that the transferability of these properties between networks of different topology but the same coordination is not valid in general.