The geometry and the number of contacts of monodisperse sphere packs using X-ray tomography

Citation

M. Saadarfar, A. Kabla, T.J. Senden and T. Aste

R. Garcia-Rojo, H. Herrmann, S. McNamara (Eds.), Powders and Grains 2005, London: CRC Press, pp. 33-36 (2005)

Abstract

The three-dimensional structure of very large samples of monodisperse bead packs is studied by means of X- Ray Computed Tomography. We retrieve the coordinates of each bead in the pack and we calculate the average coordination number by using the tomographic images to single out the neighbours in contact. The results are compared with the average coordination number obtained in (Aste et al. 2005) by using a deconvolution technique. We show that the coordination number increases with the packing fraction, varying between 6.9 and 8.2 for packing fractions between 0.59 and 0.64.

Figure sample

A reconstructed pack from the coordinates of the sphere centers.