Related papers: Symmetry, shape, and order
Dense hard-particle packings are intimately related to the structure of low-temperature phases of matter and are useful models of heterogeneous materials and granular media. Most studies of the densest packings in three dimensions have…
We have discovered a new family of three-dimensional crystal sphere packings that are strictly jammed (i.e., mechanically stable) and yet possess an anomalously low density. This family constitutes an uncountably infinite number of crystal…
We have recently devised organizing principles to obtain maximally dense packings of the Platonic and Archimedean solids, and certain smoothly-shaped convex nonspherical particles [Torquato and Jiao, Phys. Rev. E 81, 041310 (2010)]. Here we…
Rigid particles pack into structures, such as sand dunes on the beach, whose overall stability is determined by the average number of contacts between particles. However, when packing spatially extended objects with flexible shapes,…
Granular material exposed to shear shows a variety of unique phenomena: Reynolds dilatancy, positional order and orientational order effects may compete in the shear zone. We study granular packings consisting of macroscopic prolate, oblate…
If a collection of identical particles is poured into a container, different shapes will fill to different densities. But what is the shape that fills a container as close as possible to a pre-specified, desired density? We demonstrate a…
The article presents the mathematical sequences describing circle packing densities in four different geometric configurations involving a hexagonal lattice based equal circle packing in the Euclidian plane. The calculated sequences take…
Structural organization and correlations are studied in very large packings of equally sized acrylic spheres, reconstructed in three-dimensions by means of X-ray computed tomography. A novel technique, devised to analyze correlations among…
Hard spheres are ubiquitous in condensed matter: they have been used as models for liquids, crystals, colloidal systems, granular systems, and powders. Packings of hard spheres are of even wider interest, as they are related to important…
We study the optimal packing of short, hard spherocylinders confined to lie tangential to a spherical surface, using simulated annealing and molecular dynamics simulations. For clusters of up to twelve particles, we map out the changes in…
We study the sphere packing problem in Euclidean space where we impose additional constraints on the separations of the center points. We prove that any sphere packing in dimension $48$, with spheres of radii $r$, such that no two centers…
The random sequential adsorption of various particle shapes is studied in order to determine the influence of particle anisotropy on the saturated random packing. For all tested particles there is an optimal level of anisotropy which…
Due to the lack of long-range order, it remains challenging to characterize the structure of disordered solids and understand the nature of the glass transition. Here we propose a new structural order parameter by taking into account…
We investigate the ordering properties of vertically-vibrated monolayers of granular cylinders in a circular container at high packing fraction. In line with previous works by other groups, we identify liquid-crystalline ordering behaviour…
Spatially ordered systems confined to surfaces such as spheres exhibit interesting topological structures because of curvature induced frustration in orientational as well as translational order. The study of these structures is important…
In \cite{Sz17-2} we considered hyperball packings in $3$-dimensional hyperbolic space. We developed a decomposition algorithm that for each saturated hyperball packing provides a decomposition of $\HYP$ into truncated tetrahedra. In order…
We have previously explored cylindrical packings of disks and their relation to sphere packings. Here we extend the analytical treatment of disk packings, analysing the rules for phyllotactic indices of related structures and the variation…
Self-assembly of granular particles is of great interest in both applied and basic research. It is commonly observed that when randomly packed into a container, granular particles form disordered structures like glass. As the particles are…
What particle shape will generate the highest packing fraction when randomly poured into a container? In order to explore and navigate the enormous search space efficiently, we pair molecular dynamics simulations with artificial evolution.…
Motivated by breakthroughs in the synthesis of faceted nano- and colloidal particles, as well as theoretical and computational studies of their packings, we investigate a family of truncated triangular bipyramids. We report dense periodic…