Numerical simulation of charge generation and saturation for polymer particles by single impact on a metal plate

Abstract

Contact electrification phenomena are commonly observed in many handling powder process, in which the charge transfers between contacting particle and wall during collisions. In this work, a condenser model and Hertzian contact area formula were added to an LIGGGHTS code so as to predict the polymer particle charge after a single impact with a metal plate. The simulated impact charge of several single polymer particles was successfully predicted after a single collision on a metal plate with determined values for C₀, achieving an average relative error (ARE) less than 10%. An assumption that the value of charging constant parameter (k) changes with the impact velocity reduced the ARE value significantly from 20% and 9% to 2% and 0.3% for PS and Nylon 66, respectively. As a main result, the current modified LIGGGHTS code can successfully estimate the impact charge of a single particle after colliding with a wall.

Keywords:

• Impact charge
• contact electrification
• electrostatic simulation
• charge saturation
• particle-wall collision