Energy dissipation in head-on collisions of spheres
Collisions between spheres are a common ingredient in a variety of scientific problems, and the coefficient of restitution (COR) is a key parameter to describe their outcome. We present a new collision model that treats adhesion and viscoelasticity self-consistently, while energy losses arising from plastic deformation are assumed to be additive. Results show that viscoelasticity can significantly increase the energy that is dissipated in a collision, enhancing the sticking velocity. Furthermore, collisions well above the sticking velocity remain dissipative. We systemically compare the model to a large and unbiased set of published laboratory experiments to show its general applicability. The model is well capable of reproducing the important relation between impact velocity and COR as measured in the experiments, covering a wide range of materials, particle sizes, and collision velocities. Furthermore, the fitting parameters from those curves provide physical parameters such as the surface energy, yield strength, and characteristic viscous relaxation time. Our results show that all three aspects?adhesion, viscoelastic dissipation and plastic deformation?are required for a proper description of the kinetic energy losses in sphere collisions.