Microscopic analysis of saltation of particles on an obliquely oscillating plate

Abstract

This paper presents a microscopic analysis of the saltation of particles on an obliquely oscillating plate driven by sine waves with an amplitude on the order of tens of micrometers and a frequency on the order of hundreds of hertz. To examine the effect of the diameter of a particle on its motion, the trajectories and velocities of different-sized particles, from 0.5 to 500μm in mass median diameter, are analyzed using images captured by a high-speed microscope camera. The results show that larger particles bounce higher, whereas smaller particles easily agglomerate and bounce only slightly, owing to the low restitution caused by their loosely packed structure. In addition, larger particles bounce forward and backward repeatedly, while the agglomerated particles always bounce forward, and consequently have the highest transport velocity among these particles. The particle motion and the transport velocity can be explained by a theoretical probability model.