PERTURBATIVE THEORY OF THE PACKING OF MIXTURES AND OF NONSPHERICAL PARTICLES

We present a simple theory for the packing of irregular particles and mixtures considered as a perturbation of a packing of monodisperse sph eres. Using the perturbation theory we extract the different geometric al effects which affect the packing density, and discuss why packings of irregular particles are generally less dense than packings of monod isperse spheres, whereas packings of mixtures of particles of differen t sizes are generally denser than monodisperse sphere packings.