Force Distribution/Transmission in Amorphous and Crystalline Packings of Spheres

In this paper, the discrete element modeling (DEM) was used to study the force distributions/transmissions in the packings of amorphous and crystalline states generated by equal spheres subjected to an external load (of a large sphere) applied on the top of a packing. Crystalline packings such as {100}- and {111}-oriented face centered cubic (FCC), hexagonal close packed (HCP) and body centered cubic (BCC) were considered. The results show that the forces among the particles in these packings are quite different, with different force chains identified with different structures. For amorphous packings, the force chain supporting the external load gives a conical shape. The force chain in a crystalline packing is mainly of a pyramid shape and the forces therein are transmitted along the crystalline lattice. For {100}-FCC, {111}-FCC, and BCC other than HCP, the forces transmit along straight lines with different orientations. In crystalline packings, the forces in the chains are uniformly distributed in each layer and decrease linearly with the height. The force distributions in amorphous and crystalline granular packings are structure-dependent.