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Chains And Islands – Particle Agglomeration On An Electric Curtain
Gessman, Sophia Elizabeth
Gessman, Sophia Elizabeth
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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.
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Date
2025-01-01