Thursday, March 14th, 2013
Owen Myers
Department of Physics, UVM"Nonlinear Behavior of Particles Excited by Electric Curtains"
The Electric Curtain (EC) consists of a series of parallel electrodes covered by a thin dielectric surface, whose potentials oscillate with a specific driving frequency.The phase difference between electrodes repeats over N electrodes for a N-phase system. Analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of a particle immersed in the electric field generated by a two-phase EC, with a focus on chaotic dynamics of the particle will be presented. The interesting dynamics are shown with bifurcation diagrams and fractal basins of coexisting attractors for two cases: (1) particles rolling along the surface and (2) particles that are levitated above the surface.