Analysis of Voronoi clusters in the packing of uniform spheres

This paper presents a structural analysis on the packing of monosized spheres in terms of Voronoi clusters. The packings considered were generated by the discrete element method, with packing densities ranging from 0.2 to 0.74. The Voronoi clusters are composed of center particles and their neighbouring particles, which can be used to characterize the local packing structures in terms of the topological connections between particles, to be beyond the metric and topological properties of individual polyhedra as done previously. The types and distribution of clusters, together with coordination number and common geometrical neighbours determined by Voronoi polyhedra are quantified as a function of packing density. Random close packing is shown to correspond to a turning point of these evolutions.