Geometrical properties of simulated packings of spherocylinders

Abstract

In a wide range of industrial applications there appear systems of hard particles of different shapes and sizes, known as "packings". In this work, the force-biased algorithm, primarily designed to model close packings of equal spheres, is adapted to simulate mixtures of spherocylindrical particles of different radii and aspect ratios. The packing densities of simulated mono and polydisperse systems, are presented as functions of particle elongation and different algorithm parameters. It is shown that spherocylinders can pack more densely than spheres, reaching volume fraction as high as 0.705. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.