Variations around disordered close packing

The local configurations, their relative occurrences and their organization, and the resulting overall hierarchical structure in the granular packing were investigated. Clear relations between the geometrical structure and packing density were observed in the analysis of very large samples of monosized spheres packed in a disorderly fashion. The study of other quantities such as the dihedral angle distribution showed that the local organization has characteristic patterns, which depend on the packing density. The analysis of the local geometrical caging showed that at densities above 0.601, the system can no longer explore the phase space by means of local moves only and it becomes trapped either in the basin of attractions of inherent states.