Numerical modeling of Van der Waals interaction between a spherical particle and rough surfaces with different planar asperity distributions

Roughness and microstructures at the micro and the nano scales have significant influence on the van der Waals forces between the adhering particles and the surface. Previous theoretical models may treat the particle-asperity interactions in an unprecise manner, which may result in inaccurate estimations of the van der Waals force especially when the sphere is much larger than the asperities. In this paper, we proposed a numerical model to calculate the van der Waals force between a spherical particle and a rough surface with periodic nanostructures. The 3D sinusoidal rough surfaces are simplified with their asperities modelled as hemispheres, and the contact is within the Derjaguin-Muller-Toporov (DMT) regime. The proposed model calculates the van der Waals forces between the sphere and all the asperities in the contact surface, which will provide more accurate estimations of the van der Waals force. Moreover, the effect of the planar distribution of asperities on the van der Waals forces is considered, which includes the cases when asperities have close-packed hexagonal lattice, square, and hollow-centered hexagonal packing distributions. The theoretical results calculated using the proposed model are verified by comparing the results to previous theoretical and experimental results and the comparison shows that the proposed numerical model predicts the van der Waals force accurately.