1,250 research outputs found
Packing ellipsoids with overlap
The problem of packing ellipsoids of different sizes and shapes into an
ellipsoidal container so as to minimize a measure of overlap between ellipsoids
is considered. A bilevel optimization formulation is given, together with an
algorithm for the general case and a simpler algorithm for the special case in
which all ellipsoids are in fact spheres. Convergence results are proved and
computational experience is described and illustrated. The motivating
application - chromosome organization in the human cell nucleus - is discussed
briefly, and some illustrative results are presented
Finite Element Simulation of Dense Wire Packings
A finite element program is presented to simulate the process of packing and
coiling elastic wires in two- and three-dimensional confining cavities. The
wire is represented by third order beam elements and embedded into a
corotational formulation to capture the geometric nonlinearity resulting from
large rotations and deformations. The hyperbolic equations of motion are
integrated in time using two different integration methods from the Newmark
family: an implicit iterative Newton-Raphson line search solver, and an
explicit predictor-corrector scheme, both with adaptive time stepping. These
two approaches reveal fundamentally different suitability for the problem of
strongly self-interacting bodies found in densely packed cavities. Generalizing
the spherical confinement symmetry investigated in recent studies, the packing
of a wire in hard ellipsoidal cavities is simulated in the frictionless elastic
limit. Evidence is given that packings in oblate spheroids and scalene
ellipsoids are energetically preferred to spheres.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl
Complexity in surfaces of densest packings for families of polyhedra
Packings of hard polyhedra have been studied for centuries due to their
mathematical aesthetic and more recently for their applications in fields such
as nanoscience, granular and colloidal matter, and biology. In all these
fields, particle shape is important for structure and properties, especially
upon crowding. Here, we explore packing as a function of shape. By combining
simulations and analytic calculations, we study three 2-parameter families of
hard polyhedra and report an extensive and systematic analysis of the densest
packings of more than 55,000 convex shapes. The three families have the
symmetries of triangle groups (icosahedral, octahedral, tetrahedral) and
interpolate between various symmetric solids (Platonic, Archimedean, Catalan).
We find that optimal (maximum) packing density surfaces that reveal unexpected
richness and complexity, containing as many as 130 different structures within
a single family. Our results demonstrate the utility of thinking of shape not
as a static property of an object in the context of packings, but rather as but
one point in a higher dimensional shape space whose neighbors in that space may
have identical or markedly different packings. Finally, we present and
interpret our packing results in a consistent and generally applicable way by
proposing a method to distinguish regions of packings and classify types of
transitions between them.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure
Robust Algorithm to Generate a Diverse Class of Dense Disordered and Ordered Sphere Packings via Linear Programming
We have formulated the problem of generating periodic dense paritcle packings
as an optimization problem called the Adaptive Shrinking Cell (ASC) formulation
[S. Torquato and Y. Jiao, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 80}, 041104 (2009)]. Because the
objective function and impenetrability constraints can be exactly linearized
for sphere packings with a size distribution in -dimensional Euclidean space
, it is most suitable and natural to solve the corresponding ASC
optimization problem using sequential linear programming (SLP) techniques. We
implement an SLP solution to produce robustly a wide spectrum of jammed sphere
packings in for and with a diversity of disorder
and densities up to the maximally densities. This deterministic algorithm can
produce a broad range of inherent structures besides the usual disordered ones
with very small computational cost by tuning the radius of the {\it influence
sphere}. In three dimensions, we show that it can produce with high probability
a variety of strictly jammed packings with a packing density anywhere in the
wide range . We also apply the algorithm to generate various
disordered packings as well as the maximally dense packings for
and 6. Compared to the LS procedure, our SLP protocol is able to ensure that
the final packings are truly jammed, produces disordered jammed packings with
anomalously low densities, and is appreciably more robust and computationally
faster at generating maximally dense packings, especially as the space
dimension increases.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figure
Effective properties of composites with periodic random packing of ellipsoids
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effective properties of composite materials with periodic random packing of ellipsoids of different volume fractions and aspect ratios. Therefore, we employ computational homogenization. A very efficient MD-based method is applied to generate the periodic random packing of the ellipsoids. The method is applicable even for extremely high volume fractions up to 60%. The influences of the volume fraction and aspect ratio on the effective properties of the composite materials are studied in several numerical examples.NSFC/51474157National Basic Research Program of China/973Shanghai Qimingxing Program/16QA1404000State Key Laboratory for Geomechanics and Deep Underground Engineering, China University of Mining & Technology Key/SKLGDUEK152
Basic Understanding of Condensed Phases of Matter via Packing Models
Packing problems have been a source of fascination for millenia and their
study has produced a rich literature that spans numerous disciplines.
Investigations of hard-particle packing models have provided basic insights
into the structure and bulk properties of condensed phases of matter, including
low-temperature states (e.g., molecular and colloidal liquids, crystals and
glasses), multiphase heterogeneous media, granular media, and biological
systems. The densest packings are of great interest in pure mathematics,
including discrete geometry and number theory. This perspective reviews
pertinent theoretical and computational literature concerning the equilibrium,
metastable and nonequilibrium packings of hard-particle packings in various
Euclidean space dimensions. In the case of jammed packings, emphasis will be
placed on the "geometric-structure" approach, which provides a powerful and
unified means to quantitatively characterize individual packings via jamming
categories and "order" maps. It incorporates extremal jammed states, including
the densest packings, maximally random jammed states, and lowest-density jammed
structures. Packings of identical spheres, spheres with a size distribution,
and nonspherical particles are also surveyed. We close this review by
identifying challenges and open questions for future research.Comment: 33 pages, 20 figures, Invited "Perspective" submitted to the Journal
of Chemical Physics. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1008.298
Machine learning approaches for the optimization of packing densities in granular matter.
The fundamental question of how densely granular matter can pack and how this density depends on the shape of the constituent particles has been a longstanding scientific problem. Previous work has mainly focused on empirical approaches based on simulations or mean-field theory to investigate the effect of shape variation on the resulting packing densities, focusing on a small set of pre-defined shapes like dimers, ellipsoids, and spherocylinders. Here we discuss how machine learning methods can support the search for optimally dense packing shapes in a high-dimensional shape space. We apply dimensional reduction and regression techniques based on random forests and neural networks to find novel dense packing shapes by numerical optimization. Moreover, an investigation of the regression function in the dimensionally reduced shape representation allows us to identify directions in the packing density landscape that lead to a strongly non-monotonic variation of the packing density. The predictions obtained by machine learning are compared with packing simulations. Our approach can be more widely applied to optimize the properties of granular matter by varying the shape of its constituent particles
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