Variation in the local packing density near the wall of a randomly packed bed of equal spheres

Abstract

In randomly packed beds of spherical particles, a damped oscillatory variation in the local packing density appears near the containing walls and dies away in the interior. This paper presents detailed data obtained from a computer-simulated random loose packing. The molecular pair-correlation function from statistical mechanics yields a theoretical variation in local packing density which agrees with values from the simulation. The variation is similar to the short-range order of the arrangement of spheres in the interior of the random assemblage.