Phys.org  April 27, 2021 Sandstorms can generate high-magnitude electrical fields capable of disrupting communication equipment. Recent studies have shown that sand can pick up static electricity through collisions that take place near the ground. To resolve the motion of sand particles researchers in Saudi Arabia created a large-eddy simulation, where the tiny fluctuations get smoothed over and only large ones remain. They modeled the turbulent eddies of sandstorms inside a virtual box that stretches from ground level to kilometer-scale heights in the atmosphere. The sandstorm’s strength was controlled with an algorithm that introduced different densities of charged particles into the […]