Deflection of a dilute stream of particles

We consider a two-dimensional system in which a dilute stream of particles collides with an oblique planar wall. Both collisions between particles and collisions between particles and the wall are inelastic. We perform numerical simulations in two dimensions and show that the mean force experienced by the wall can be a nonmonotonic function of the angle between the wall and the particle stream. We show that this occurs because particles that rebound from the wall can collide with incoming particles and be scattered. This kind of particle-particle collision can reduce the force experienced by the wall. We refer to this effect as shielding. Furthermore, we show that the force experienced by the wall may be an increasing, decreasing or nonmonotonic function of the restitution coefficient in particle-particle collisions. We derive an exact solution for the mean force on the wall if the system is dilute, and the theoretical prediction is found to be in good agreement with our numerical results. The theory allows us to explicitly quantify the effects of shielding, and thus to explain a number of interesting features. The theory generally provides a useful upper bound for the mean force. © 2010 The American Physical Society.