XXII ICTAM, 2529 August 2008, Adelaide, Australia

THE DYNAMICS OF PIZZA TOSSING Kuang-Chen Liu, James Friend & Leslie Yeo Department of Mechanical Engineering, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia
Summary We investigate a variation of the classic bouncing ball problem where the ball is replaced with a disc (pizza dough) and the platform with which the disc interacts (pizza makers hand) undergoes a combined angular and linear oscillation along the vertical axis (pizza tossing action). In addition to the act of pizza tossing, the vibro-impact system described above also applies to a class of standing-wave ultrasonic motors, which operates by tossing the rotor at rates above 20 kHz. Through numerical simulations, we investigate the performance of different pizza tossing techniques by varying the amplitude ratio (L) and the phase lag () between the vertical and rotational component of the oscillating platform. Our results show that the energy efciency and the rotational speed are maximized when L 1, and = 0.

INTRODUCTION The nonlinear dynamical system of a ball bouncing on a vibrating platform is one that is simple to describe, yet difcult to analyze. The system displays a range of interesting behaviours, including the period doubling route to chaos, and eventually periodic orbits known variously as the sticking solution, complete chattering or locking [1, 3]. Although the system is worthy of investigation in itself for the intriguing behaviour it exhibits, we study a variation of the bouncing ball problem that has direct real-world applications: a bouncing disk on a vibrating platform with combined angular and linear oscillation described by b(t) = sin(t + ) and s(t) = A sin(t), (1)

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where b and s are respectively, the angular and linear displacement of the platform. The angular oscillation of the platform imparts rotary motion to the bouncing disk and gives rise to effects such as impulsive frictional torque at each collision, and the possibility of stick-slip rotation while the disk and platform are in contact. The system corresponds to the stator-rotor interacFigure 1. Pizza tossing techniques: the trajection in a class of standing-wave ultrasonic motor [4], and a technique used by tory traced by a point on the oscillating platpizza makers to atten the pizza dough into the desired shape pizza tossing. form. (a c) the effect varying phase lag with There are many interesting and non-trivial questions related to pizza tossing: = /4), (d f) the effect of varying the L what kind of thickness distribution will the tossed pizza dough form and how amplitude ratio L = tan( ) with = /4. L should the material property of the dough be modelled? The question that we try to answer in this paper relevant to both the pizza tossing and the ultrasonic motor is this, what is the optimal pizza tossing technique? It is often assumed by researchers of standing-wave ultrasonic motors that the optimal stator motion to spin the rotor is an elliptical motion (Fig 1.a); however, pizza makers would use a line type motion (Fig 1.c) for pizza tossing. Furthermore, it is unclear how the performance change when the amplitude ratio (L = ae /A) is varied (ae is the radius at which the pizza is held). THE BOUNCING DISK MODEL To answer the above questions about the best pizza tossing technique and stator trajectory in ultrasonic motors, a general model for the bouncing disk problem was formed using the following assumptions: 1.) collisions have zero duration and is treated using speed independent coefcient of restitution , 2.) contact pressure is uniform, and 3.) torque is transmitted to the disk by Coulomb friction with cofcient and an effective radius of ae . Due to the discontinuities introduced by separations, impulsive forces, and friction forces, the motion of the disk can be divided into four phases: 1.) parabolic ight, 2.) impact, 3.) sticking contact, and 4.) sliding contact. Analytical solution for each phase can be obtained separately, thus the main challenge in setting up a computational model is in determining the correct sequence and duration of the phases. The ow chart shown in Fig 2 describes how the four phases are to be sequenced. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Three performance measures are used to compare the pizza tossing techniques: 1.) the nal rotational speed reached by the pizza dough rf , 2.) the speed ratio dened as nal speed rf over maximum platform speed , and 3.) the energy efciency dened as the ratio of the rotational kinetic energy gained by the disk Er over the total energy input from the platform Ein .

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Figure 2. Model simulation ow chart. The inset shows a possible trajectory of x (dashed black) and s (solid red) for one cycle of simulation starting with a collision and ending with separation.

While varying the amplitude ratio L, c = A2 + (ae )2 is kept constant, thus by dening L = tan(L ), we have (ae , A) = c(sin(L ), cos(L )), and by varying L between 0 and /2 all possible L from 0 to are considered. The parameters chosen for the present investigation are c = 25 cm 2c is approximately the arc length traced out by the pizza tossing action, = 6 rad/s = 3 Hz chosen to so that the vertical speed of the toss in the order of 5 m/s, d = 30 cm the diameter of a typical pizza and is used to determine the radius of friction and gyration (ae = 0.4d and ag = d/2 2), = 0.6 roughly the coefcient of friction between skin and paper, g = 10 m/s2 , = 0 assuming perfectly plastic collision. The initial conditions are set with a pizza dough at rest with t0 = 3/2, corresponding to the lowest point of the tossing motion. Finally, the simulation is run for a single cycle because pizza makers let the dough come to a stop before the next toss.
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Figure 3. The performance of different pizza tossing technique when phase lag and amplitude ratio L are varied

The contour plots of the three performance measures in Fig 3 show that the the optimal pizza tossing technique predicted by our bouncing disk model is very similar to the actual motion employed by pizza makers. The maximum nal speed, speed ratio and energy efciency all have at close to 0 or, and L close to /4 (L 1). The results for the runs counter to the common assumption that = /2 is the optimal stator motion for standing-wave ultrasonic motors. One possible explanation for the descrepancy is that the rotor in standing-wave ultrasonic motors are commonly springloaded, while the pizza is only under the effect of gravity, that is, the optimal phase lag is related to the part of the cycle that as higher contact force) References [1] Nicholas B. Tullaro. Braid analysis of a bouncing ball. Phys. Rev. E, 50(6):45094522, Dec 1994. [2] S. Giusepponi, F. Marchesoni, and M. Borromeo. Randomness in the bouncing ball dynamics. Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 351:142158, June 2005. [3] J. M. Luck and Anita Mehta. Bouncing ball with a nite restitution: Chattering, locking, and chaos. Phys. Rev. E, 48(5):39883997, Nov 1993. [4] David Wajchman, Kuang-Chen Liu, James Friend, and Leslie Yeo. An ultrasonic piezoelectric motor utilising a noncircular cross sectioned twisted beam. IEEE UFFC, In press; accepted for publication 24 November 2007. [5] K.C Liu, J. Friend, and L. Yeo. Nonlinear dynamics of a bouncing disk. In Proceedings of the 5th Australasian Congress on Applied Mechanics, volume 1, pages 307312. Engineers Australia, 2007.