Critical rolling angle of microparticles

At the micrometer-scale and below, particle adhesion becomes particularly relevant as van der Waals force often dominates volume and surface proportional forces. The rolling resistance of microparticles and their critical rolling angles prior to the initiation of free-rolling and/or complete detachment are critical in numerous industrial processes and natural phenomenon involving particle adhesion and granular dynamics. The current work describes a non-contact measurement approach for determining the critical rolling angle of a single microparticle under the influence of a contact-point base-excitation generated by a transient displacement field of a prescribed surface acoustic wave pulse and reports the critical rolling angle data for a set of polystyrene latex microparticles.