Viscous rebound of a quasi-2D cylinder on a solid wall

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to extend the simple concept of apparent coefficient of restitution, widely approached in the literature for the case of a single-contact-point between a sphere and a wall, to the case of bouncing whose complexity is increased due to the shape of the contacting object. Experiments are carried out with a finite-length cylinder, freely falling in a liquid at rest. Complex 3D motions of the cylinder with respect to the wall occur during bouncing, including multi-contact-points between the cylinder and the bottom as well as cavitation. We investigate numerical modelling of an idealized situation (2D infinite cylinder falling parallel to the wall) with 2D simulations where the fluid equations of motion were coupled to the particle equation of motion through an Immersed Boundary Method. The particle equation of motion is coupled to an elastic force to model bouncing, requiring a parameterization of the cut-off length (interpreted as a roughness) and the contact time (associated with the contact elasticity) used here to capture the experimental observations. The simulations confirmed that i) the departure of the coefficient of restitution from 0 is strictly dependent on the apparent roughness and ii) the coefficient of restitution depends on the contact time. Finally, we model the coefficient of restitution as the product of two contributions to the mechanical loss of energy: the collision-to-terminal velocity ratio ($V_c/V_t$) of the approach-phase and the rebound-to-collision velocity ratio ($-V_r/V_c$) of the contact-phase. This leads to a reasonably good prediction of the coefficient of restitution in the intermediate regime in $St$. This suggests the relevance of lumping the complex details of physical phenomena involved during contact into a simple concept based on the contact apparent roughness and elasticity.