Stokes' Cradle: Normal Three-Body Collisions between Wetted Particles

TL;DR

This study combines experiments and theory to analyze three-body collisions of wetted particles, revealing new outcomes and physics that influence particle behavior in liquid-coated collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup and develops a scaling theory that accounts for lubrication forces, particle deformation, and liquid bridge effects in three-body collisions.

Findings

Critical Stokes number decreases with increasing oil viscosity.

Four collision outcomes are observed: agglomeration, Newton's cradle, reverse Newton's cradle, and separation.

Additional resistance and rebound criteria are essential for accurate regime prediction.

Abstract

In this work, a combination of experiments and theory is used to investigate three-body, normal collisions between solid particles with a liquid coating (i.e., "wetted" particles). Experiments are carried out using a Stokes' cradle, an apparatus inspired by the Newton's cradle desktop toy except with wetted particles. Unlike previous work on two-body systems, which may either agglomerate or rebound upon collision, four outcomes are possible in three-body systems: fully agglomerated, Newton's cradle (striker and target particle it strikes agglomerate), reverse Newton's cradle (targets agglomerate while striker separates), and fully separated. Post-collisional velocities are measured over a range of parameters. For all experiments, as the impact velocity increases, the progression of outcomes observed is fully agglomerated, reverse Newton's cradle, and fully separated. Notably, as the viscosity of the oil increases, experiments reveal a decrease in the critical Stokes number (the Stokes number that demarcates a transition from agglomeration to separation) for both sets of adjacent particles. A scaling theory is developed based on lubrication forces and particle deformation and elasticity. Unlike previous work for two-particle systems, two pieces of physics are found to be critical in the prediction of a regime map that is consistent with experiments: (i) an additional resistance upon rebound of the target particles due to the pre-existing liquid bridge between them (which has no counterpart in two-particle collisions), and (ii) the addition of a rebound criterion due to glass transition of the liquid layer at high pressure between colliding particles.