Chains and islands - Particle agglomeration on a three-phase electric curtain

Abstract

Usefulness of electric curtains for particle mitigation is limited by formation of particle agglomerates, which can remain immobile for long time durations. Agglomerates can form elongated particle chains or more circular particle islands. The paper reports on experimental and computational studies of electric curtain particle agglomerates. The experiments used size-filtered lunar and Martian regolith to examine agglomerate structure and the conditions that result in agglomerate formation, and mapped metrics characterizing agglomerate size, shape, and density. The computations used combined discrete-element method and boundary-element method to explore the mechanism for formation of particle agglomerates.