Computational strategies for 3D computation of the electric field in a vibratory tribocharger for mixed granular solids

In a previous paper, the authors introduced an original model for the computation of the triboelectric charges due to particle-to-particle collisions in a vibrated bed. The evaluation of the electric field inside the particle bed is a prerequisite for the accurate modelling of the tribochaging process, as it determines the trajectory of the particles as well as the charge swapping during collision. Two different approaches are presented and compared in terms of accuracy and computational time consumption. One consisted of computing the electric field as the superposition of the contributions of each point charge. The other, which proved to be much more effective, implied solving the Poisson equation for the potential generated by a given spatial distribution of charge density.