Effect of electrostatic interaction on impact breakage of agglomerates formed by charged dielectric particles

In this paper, the prototypical process of the normal impact of dense agglomerates is investigated using the discrete element method-boundary element method coupled simulations. The agglomerate consists of 50 charged particles with the surface energy equal to 10mJ/m^{2}. The particles are assumed to be tribocharged and follow an exponential charge distribution, while the varying levels of coupled polarization are also considered. Simulation results reveal that the presence of the electrostatic interactions due to particle charging and polarization could drive more pronounced re-agglomeration after the collision, which effectively reduces the degree of agglomerate fragmentation. Moreover, when quantifying the collision outcomes using the fragmentation ratio, the influence of the electrostatic force is most significant at a moderate incident velocity. This is because, at such incident velocities, the impact is violent enough to break the agglomerate, but many ejected fragments are usually at low velocities and are attracted back by the long-range electrostatic force. Furthermore, the electrostatic force between same-sign particles even becomes attractive when particles are strongly polarized, leading to qualitative changes in particle dynamics. Finally, by comparing the collision outcomes under different incident velocities, the contact interactions are found to prevail when particles are still bounded in the agglomerate, while the electrostatic interaction becomes dominant after particles detach from each other.