Crystallization of non-Brownian Spheres under Horizontal Shaking

Olivier Pouliquen (1) , Maxime Nicolas (1) , Patrick Weidman (1)

1 LadHyX - Laboratoire d'hydrodynamique

Until now, it has been observed that a collective handling of uniform spheres could only lead to a random close packing of 0.64 maximum volume fraction. In this Letter, we show that denser crystalline arrangements can be obtained when beads are poured at low flow rates into a horizontally shaken container. A parallel is suggested between this process and that of colloidal sedimentation which also yields crystalline structure.

Domaines: Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]

Olivier Pouliquen, Maxime Nicolas, Patrick Weidman. Crystallization of non-Brownian Spheres under Horizontal Shaking. Physical Review Letters, 1997, 79, pp.3640. ⟨hal-01441080⟩