Coordination number of binary mixtures of spheres

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study of the coordination number of binary packings by the use of the liquid bridge technique and provides detailed information about the distributed coordination numbers corresponding to different types of contacts between small and large components and their dependence on particle size distribution. The results indicate that increasing the volume fraction of small component increases the small-to-small and large-to-small contacts and decreases the small-to-large and large-to-large contacts; and this trend is more apparent for a packing with a large size difference. For the packings under gravity, the overall mean coordination number is essentially a constant and independent of particle size distribution.