Early-stage aggregation in three-dimensional charged granular gas

Abstract

Neutral grains made of the same dielectric material can attain considerable charges due to collisions and generate long-range interactions. We perform molecular dynamic simulations in three dimensions for a dilute, freely-cooling granular gas of viscoelastic particles that exchange charges during collisions. As compared to the case of clustering of viscoelastic particles solely due to dissipation, we find that the electrostatic interactions due to collisional charging alter the characteristic size, morphology and growth rate of the clusters. The average cluster size grows with time as a power law, whose exponent is relatively larger in the charged gas than the neutral case. The growth of the average cluster size is found to be independent of the ratio of characteristic Coulomb to thermal energy, or equivalently, of the typical Bjerrum length. However, this ratio alters the crossover time of the growth. Both simulations and mean-field calculations based on the Smoluchowski's equation suggest that a suppression of particle diffusion due to the electrostatic interactions helps in the aggregation process.

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• Anomalous aggregation regimes of temperature-dependent Smoluchowski equations
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• The role of energy in ballistic agglomeration
• Clusters of tribocharged dust aggregates as pebbles in protoplanetary disks
• Exact solutions of temperature-dependent Smoluchowski equations
• Rheology of dilute granular gas mixtures where the grains interact via a square shoulder and well potential
• Kinetic theory of dilute weakly charged granular gases with hard-core and inverse power-law interactions under uniform shear flow
• Plastic Instabilities in Charged Granular Systems: Competition between Elasticity and Electrostatics
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