7th ISF

PHYS025 - Investigation of Styrofoam Ball Stability in Acoustic Field

Acoustic levitation has been widely used for acoustophoretic contactless transportation, leading to a broad range of applications, such as spectroscopy, biochemistry, and pharmaceuticals. In this paper, we explored the stability of a styrofoam ball in acoustic fields generated by a pair of transducers by simulating the potential field in the system. The simulation can be validated by tracking the oscillation of the styrofoam ball with a camera. We analyzed the stability of the system from the ball’s oscillation under the effects of external force, using forced oscillation. It appeared that external force could affect the system, altering the balls' trajectory. We found that forced oscillation resulted in a coupled oscillation and energy transfer between axes, causing the ball to escape from the field in a horizontal direction. Moreover, as the system exhibited non-linear behavior, the stability of the trapping location can be determined by the frequency range of the bistable zone. To further explore the stability of acoustic levitation, inspired by silicone oil drop which exhibited quantum-like behavior in a macroscopic scale, we considered cases where the balls’ behavior is considered quantum-like when there is no external disturbance. We then calculated the probability of the styrofoam balls escaping through quantum tunneling even though the barrier has higher energy, and the balls should completely be held captive. It is shown that although there is a probability that quantum tunneling might occur, it is significantly low and would take a long time to observe

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