A theoretical model of collision between soft-spheres with Hertz elastic loading and nonlinear plastic unloading

This paper presents a theoretical model on the normal (head-on) collision between soft-spheres on the basis of elastic loading of the Hertz contact for compression process and a nonlinear plastic unloading for restitution one, in which the parameters all are determined in terms of the material and geometric ones of the spheres, and the behaviors of perfect elastic, inelastic, and perfect plastic collisions appeared in the classical mechanics are fully described once a value of coefficient of restitution is specified in the region of 0 ≤ ε ≤ 1. After an empirical formula of the coefficient of restitution dependent on the impact velocity is suggested to fit the existing experimental measurements by means of the least square method, the predictions of the dependency and the collision duration are in well quantitative agreement with their experimental measurements. It is found that the measurable quantities are dependent on both the impact velocity and the parameters of spheres. Following this model, finally, an approach to determine the spring coefficient in the linear viscoelastic model of the collision is also displayed. These results obtained here will be significantly beneficial for the applications where a collision model is requested in the simulations of relevant grain flows and impact dynamics etc..