Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Mechanical Engineering
First Advisor
Jeffrey S. Marshall
Abstract
The usefulness of electric curtains for particle mitigation on surfaces (such as solar panels) is limited by the formation of particle agglomerates, which appear to be nearly ‘inactive’ and remain fixed on the electric curtain for long time durations. These two-dimensional agglomerates are observed to take the form of islands or chains under different conditions. Because the agglomerates require considerable time to be cleared by electric field forces alone, they can dramatically increase energy expenditure required for clearing particles from the electric curtain. The current paper reports on an experimental and computational study of particle agglomerates on an electric curtain. The experiments used size-filtered lunar and Martian regolith to examine the conditions that result in formation of particle agglomerates, and mapped out different metrics characterizing agglomerate size, shape, and density. The computations used an adhesive discrete-element method for the particles and a boundary-element method for the electric field to explore the mechanism for formation of particle agglomerates.
Language
en
Number of Pages
108 p.
Recommended Citation
Gessman, Sophia Elizabeth, "Chains And Islands – Particle Agglomeration On An Electric Curtain" (2025). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 2028.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/2028
