Abstract:The study of the orderly packing of macroscopic particle can not only provide a research model for the self-assembly of microscopic particles in thermal systems but also help to imcrease the packing fraction of granular materials in industry. Experimental results showed that cubic particles with rounded corners subjected to alternating rotation of the cylinder would achieve orderly packing. In order to investigate the internal structure evolution and mechanism of the orderly packing process of cubic particles with rounded corners in rotational cylinders, the cubic particles with rounded corners are constructed by the superquadric surface equation. Numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the orderly packing process of cubic particles with rounded corners in the rotation cylinder based on discrete element method. The simulation reproduces the transition of cubic particles from the random packing state to the ordered dense packing state in the experiment, and gives the variation of packing fraction and cubatic order parameter with the increase of rotation number under different motion. The results show that the packing fraction and the cubatic order parameter to increase gradually with the increase of the number of rotation until a stable value. The orderly packing process of the system starts from the external particles to the inner particles gradually. By regulating the angular displacement of the cylinder, it is found that the characteristic number of alternating rotation for the particles to complete the orderly packing process is inversely proportional to the angular displacement of the cylinder. If the angular displacement is too low, the system will only form a structure with clusters of particles whose sides are parallel to the horizontal plane and clusters of particles whose diagonal of the face parallel to gravity. It is also found that cubic particles in a sub-gravity environment can also achieve orderly packing through the alternating rotation of the cylinder. The reduction of gravitational acceleration inhibits the transition from disordered to ordered packing of cubic particles.