Analysis of the electrostatic force on a dielectric particle with partial charge distribution

This paper presents the analysis of the electrostatic force acting on a charged dielectric particle on a grounded plane. The force has been determined by a numerical field calculation method to make clear the effect of particle dielectric constant and charge distribution on the particle surface. The charge is treated to be distributed in three ways: (a) uniformly over entire surface, (b) partially on the upper, or (c) on the lower part of a particle. The calculation results show that, if a particle with dielectric constant ɛp = 3 is partially charged on the lower part by a zenith angle π/2, π/4 and π/8, the force shall be higher by 0.7, 4.3 and 20 times, respectively, than that for a uniform charging with the same charge amount. On the other hand, the force becomes weaker when charge is on the upper part. The effect of the particle dielectric constant is found to be dependent on the charge distribution. With charge uniform on the entire surface or on the upper part, the force always increases with the dielectric constant. However, when surface charge is restricted to a small area at the lower part of the particle (θq < π/4), the force may decrease with increasing the dielectric constant.