Granular templating: Effects of boundary structure on particle packings under simultaneous shear and compression

¹  Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge - Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QZ, UK
²  Pfizer Global Research and Development - Groton, CT 06340, USA
³  Pfizer Global Research and Development - Sandwich, Kent, CT13 9NJ, UK

Received: 9 June 2006
Accepted: 6 November 2006

Abstract

We present our findings on the effect of various confining substrates, both crystalline and amorphous, on spherical particles, packed under gravity followed by the simultaneous application of shear and compressive strains. We treat the voids and particles of the substrates interchangeably by identifying the primitive unit cell for each, and use radial and angular distribution functions to determine the packing structures. We show that a substrate templated with a 2D square lattice, for which void and particle packing structures are identical, is most suitable for inducing crystallisation mimicking the substrate structure.