The Coefficient of Restitution of Spheroid Particles Impacting on a Wall—Part I: Experiments

Abstract

Coefficients of restitution (CoR) is used to scale the kinetic energy dissipation, which is a necessary parameter for discrete element modeling simulations of granular flow. Differences from the collision of spherical particles, CoRs of spheroid particle are affected not only by materials, particle size, and impacting velocity, but also by the contact inclination angle of the particle. This article presents our experimental investigation to measure the velocities of translation and rotation using high-speed camera and calculate the CoR in normal direction of prolate spheroid particles impacting flat targets. The results show that this CoR of a prolate spheroid particle is composed of two parts, translation and rotation. The effect from the contact inclination angle is not obvious for a given velocity. When the contact point is close to a pole, the first part plays a major role. On the contrary, the second part dominates the CoR, when the contact point is close to the equator. A dimensionless number, e*, is defined to scale the proportion of velocity due to rotation in the total rebound velocity at the contact point. The relationship between the contact inclination angle, ϕ, and e* for 25 deg < ϕ < 90 deg is given in this article.