Effect of confinement on dense packings of rigid frictionless spheres and polyhedra

We study numerically the influence of confinement on the solid fraction and on the structure of three-dimensional random close packed (RCP) granular materials subject to gravity. The effects of grain shape (spherical or polyhedral), material polydispersity and confining wall friction on this dependence are investigated. In agreement with a simple geometrical model, the solid fraction is found to decrease linearly for increasing confinement no matter the grain shape. Furthermore, this decrease remains valid for bidisperse sphere packings although the gradient seems to reduce significantly when the proportion of small particles reaches $40\%$ by volume. The confinement effect on the coordination number is also captured by an extension of the aforementioned model.

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Source https://hal.science/hal-00762965
Author Camenen, Jean-François, Descantes, Yannick, Richard, Patrick
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated June 1, 2026, 04:44 (UTC)
Created June 1, 2026, 04:44 (UTC)
Identifier hal-00762965
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Département Matériaux (IFSTTAR/MAT) ; Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux (IFSTTAR)-PRES Université Nantes Angers Le Mans (UNAM)
creator Camenen, Jean-François
date 2012-12-07T00:00:00
harvest_object_id 8ebd81f6-1bb3-403d-8575-a56285250577
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2024-12-03T00:00:00
relation info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/arxiv/1212.1998
set_spec type:UNDEFINED