Granular materials composed of shape-anisotropic grains

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in the physics of granular materials made of shape-anisotropic particles, focusing on their unique properties like orientational order and self-organization.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the recent research developments concerning shape-anisotropic granular materials and their distinctive behaviors.

Findings

Increased understanding of orientational order in anisotropic granular systems

Identification of self-organization phenomena in non-spherical particles

Progress in modeling static and dynamic properties of anisotropic grains

Abstract

Granulate physics has made considerable progress during the past decades in the understanding of static and dynamic properties of large ensembles of interacting macroscopic particles, including the modeling of phenomena like jamming, segregation and pattern formation, the development of related industrial applications or traffic flow control. The specific properties of systems composed of shape-anisotropic (elongated or flattened) particles have attracted increasing interest in recent years. Orientational order and self-organization are among the characteristic phenomena that add to the special features of granular matter of spherical or irregular particles. An overview of this research field is given.