(60a) Novel Computational Strategy for Particle Charge Determination

Electrostatically charged granular matters are important in a wide variety of contexts, ranging from particulate matter (PM) pollution, to industrial handling of pharmaceutical products. Various electrostatic properties such as the total charge of a cluster of particles, and macroscopic electric fields of granular systems can be easily quantified. However, an efficient tool to measure individual charges has yet to be developed to better understand how charged particles interact. In this work, we build a novel computational strategy to obtain charges of individual particles by combining proper force fields, which are used to simulate particle trajectories, and an optimization technique that evolves the particles’ charges. The force fields include the dielectric polarization due to the nontrivial particle-particle charge mismatch and particle-environment dielectric contrast. We apply the strategy to simple systems: charged particles in vacuum environment, where only electrostatic interactions determine inter-particle forces. The extensibility of the strategy to more complex systems will be discussed.