Compaction of cereal grain

TL;DR

This study investigates how shaking affects the packing density and surface structure of elongated oat grains, revealing increased compaction and nematic-like arrangements.

Contribution

It provides experimental insights into the compaction behavior of anisotropic, bimodal polydisperse grains under shaking conditions.

Findings

Packing fraction increases with shaking.

Surface exhibits nematic-like order.

Initial disordered state evolves to dense packing.

Abstract

We report on simple shaking experiments to measure the compaction of a column of Firth oat grain. Such grains are elongated anisotropic particles with a bimodal polydispersity. In these experiments, the particle configurations start from an initially disordered, low-packing-fraction state and under vertical shaking evolve to a dense state with evidence of nematic-like structure at the surface of the confining tube. This is accompanied by an increase in the packing fraction of the grain.