Related papers: The packing of granular polymer chains
The packing problem of long thin filaments that are injected into confined spaces is of fundamental interest for physicists and biologists alike. How linear threads pack and coil is well known only for the ideal case of rigid containers,…
A collection of spherical particles can be packed tightly together into an amorphous packing known as "random close packing" (RCP). This structure is of interest as a model for the arrangement of molecules in simple liquids and glasses, as…
We numerically study structural properties of mechanically stable packings of hard spheres (HS), in a wide range of packing fractions $0.53 \le \phi \le 0.72$. Detailed structural information is obtained from the analysis of orientational…
In both nature and engineering, loosely packed granular materials are often compacted inside confined geometries. Here, we explore such behaviour in a quasi-two dimensional geometry, where parallel rigid walls provide the confinement. We…
Granular packings of non-convex or elongated particles can form free-standing structures like walls or arches. For some particle shapes, such as staples, the rigidity arises from interlocking of pairs of particles, but the origins of…
The channel size distribution in hard sphere systems, based on the local neighbor correlation of four particle positions, is investigated for all volume fractions up to jamming. For each particle, all three particle combinations of…
By means of contact dynamic simulations, we investigate the contact network topology and force chains in two-dimensional packings of elongated particles modeled by rounded-cap rectangles. The morphology of large packings of elongated…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Cohesive particles form agglomerates that are usually very porous. Their geometry, particularly their fractal dimension, depends on the agglomeration process (diffusion-limited or ballistic growth by adding single particles or…
Bead packs of up to 150,000 mono-sized spheres with packing densities ranging from 0.58 to 0.64 have been studied by means of X-ray Computed Tomography. These studies represent the largest and the most accurate description of the structure…
When are athermal soft sphere packings jammed ? Any experimentally relevant definition must at the very least require a jammed packing to resist shear. We demonstrate that widely used (numerical) protocols in which particles are compressed…
We make use of the previously developed formalism for a monomer ensemble and include angular dependence of the segments of the polymer chains thus described. In particular we show how to deal with stiffness when the polymer chain is…
We study the packing fraction of clusters in free-falling streams of spherical and irregularly shaped particles using flash X-ray radiography. The estimated packing fraction of clusters is low enough to correspond to coordination numbers…
Packing problems have been of great interest in many diverse contexts for many centuries. The optimal packing of identical objects has been often invoked to understand the nature of low temperature phases of matter. In celebrated work,…
A formula is derived for stiffness of a polymer chain in terms of the distribution function of end-to-end vectors. This relationship is applied to calculate the stiffness of Gaussian chains (neutral and carrying electric charges at the…
We numerically study the structure of the interactions occurring in three-dimensional systems of hard spheres at jamming, focusing on the large-scale behavior. Given the fundamental role they play in the configuration of jammed packings, we…
Nanoparticles with "sticky patches" have long been proposed as building blocks for the self-assembly of complex structures. The synthetic realizability of such patchy particles, however, greatly lags behind predictions of patterns they…
We experimentally determine ensemble-averaged responses of granular packings to point forces, and we compare these results to recent models for force propagation in a granular material. We used 2D granular arrays consisting of photoelastic…
Semiflexible polymers are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems, where their intermediate rigidity gives rise to rich structural and dynamical behavior. Confinement plays a central role in these behaviors, as spatial restrictions can…
We present the results of analytic calculations and numerical simulations of the behaviour of a new class of chain molecules which we call thick polymers. The concept of the thickness of such a polymer, viewed as a tube, is encapsulated by…