Related papers: Competition between Glassy Five-Fold Structures an…
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…
At sufficiently low temperatures and high densities, repulsive spherical particles in two-dimensions (2d) form close-packed structures with six-fold symmetry. By contrast, when the interparticle interaction has an attractive anisotropic…
We report on experiments to measure the temporal and spatial evolution of packing arrangements of anisotropic, cylindrical granular material, using high-resolution capacitive monitoring. In these experiments, the particle configurations…
The developing structure in systems of compacting ductile grains were studied experimentally in two and three dimensions. In both dimensions, the peaks of the radial distribution function were reduced, broadened, and shifted compared with…
The three dimensional structure of large packings of monosized spheres with volume fractions ranging between 0.58 and 0.64 has been studied with X-ray Computed Tomography. We search for signatures of organization, we classify local…
The correlation between local structure and the propensity for structural rearrangements has been widely investigated in glass forming liquids and glasses. In this paper we use the excess two-body entropy $S_2$ and tetrahedrality $\n_{tet}$…
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…
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,…
The quasistatic behavior of a simple 2D model of a cohesive powder under isotropic loads is investigated by Discrete Element simulations. The loose packing states, as studied in a previous paper, undergo important structural changes under…
Static granular packings are model hard-sphere glass formers. The nature of glass transition has remained a hotly debated issue. We review recent experimental progresses in using granular materials to study glass transitions. We focus on…
We report numerical results of effective attractive forces on the packing properties of two-dimensional elongated grains. In deposits of non-cohesive rods in 2D, the topology of the packing is mainly dominated by the formation of ordered…
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 ordering properties of two-dimensional granular materials using several shapes created by welding ball bearings together. Ordered domains form much more easily in two than in three dimensions, even when configurations lack…
The formation of quasi-spherical cages from protein building blocks is a remarkable self-assembly process in many natural systems, where a small number of elementary building blocks are assembled to build a highly symmetric icosahedral…
The structural properties of dense random packings of identical hard spheres (HS) are investigated. The bond order parameter method is used to obtain detailed information on the local structural properties of the system for different…
Upon mechanical loading, granular materials yield and undergo plastic deformation. The nature of plastic deformation is essential for the development of the macroscopic constitutive models and the understanding of shear band formation.…
Glass transition is accompanied by a rapid growth of the structural relaxation time and a concomitant decrease of configurational entropy. It remains unclear whether the transition has a thermodynamic origin, and whether the dynamic arrest…
The ordering of rod-like particles in soft, deformable containers emerges from the interplay of anisotropic interactions, geometric confinement, and boundary compliance. This competition couples internal particle organization to container…
Since the 1920s, packing arguments have been used to rationalize crystal structures in systems ranging from atomic mixtures to colloidal crystals. Packing arguments have recently been applied to complex nanoparticle structures, where they…
Entropy drives the phase behavior of colloids ranging from dense suspensions of hard spheres or rods to dilute suspensions of hard spheres and depletants. Entropic ordering of anisotropic shapes into complex crystals, liquid crystals, and…