2011/09/30 by Saulo D. S. Reis, S. D. S. Reis, N. A. M. Araújo +4 · 2 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Material Dynamics and Properties #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.comp-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/97/18004
published as EPL 97,18004 (2012) · 5 pages, 5 figures
openalex publication_date 2012/01/01 · arxiv created 2012/01/04 · arxiv updated 2012/01/05 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We present the first systematic algorithm to estimate the maximum packing density of spheres when the grain sizes are drawn from an arbitrary size distribution. With an Apollonian filling rule, we implement our technique for disks in 2d and spheres in 3d. As expected, the densest packing is achieved with power-law size distributions. We also test the method on homogeneous and on empirical real distributions, and we propose a scheme to obtain experimentally accessible distributions of grain sizes with low porosity. Our method should be helpful in the development of ultra-strong ceramics and high-performance concrete.