Kinetic adhesion test to determine particle surface energy.

ABSTRACT

A new hardware is described to quantify the particle surface energy by assuming that the Johnson Kendall and Roberts theory of elastic-adhesive contacts is applicable. The setup is used in the active section of the measurement, where newly designed elements provide the sharp impact needed to detach the particles under the action of their own kinetic energy. It employs a selection of sensors to provide the necessary measurements in a streamlined procedure, which lets the user complete one test in less than one minute. The temporal resolution is 1µs for the contact time measurement and the velocity has a repeatability of 1%. The surface energy is a significant parameter for the characterisation of particulate materials and is widely used in Discrete Element simulations of the bulk behaviour.