2006 AIChE Annual Meeting
(385g) Clustering of Sand Grains Due to Triboelectrification
Authors
We must also understand the history of Mars in order to predict what resources are available today. Many of the recently discovered features on Mars appear to have analogs on Earth that formed in the presence of liquid water. However, some of these Martian features appear to lack erosional damage, which suggests a contemporary mechanism for their creation. Here we report experiments that offer an alternative explanation, based on electrostatic effects, for the creation of some of these features. When sand grains are poured down an inclined acrylic sheet at low relative humidity, the grains cluster together into sharp pointed spikes, which resemble the features on Mars referred to as razorbacks.
These features also demonstrate the ability of electrostatic charging to agglomerate a normally free flowing material, dry sand, simply by allowing the material to flow down an insulating chute. This work also supplies an exceedingly simple test for the effectiveness of anti-static devices such as static eliminators, anti-static sprays or even anti-static nanoparticle coatings.