title: Modifying self-assembly and species separation in three-dimensional systems of shape-anisotropic particles.
abstract: The behaviors of large, dynamic assemblies of macroscopic particles are of direct relevance to geophysical and industrial processes and may also be used as easily studied analogs to micro- or nano-scale systems, or model systems for microbiological, zoological, and even anthropological phenomena. We study vibrated mixtures of elongated particles, demonstrating that the inclusion of differing particle "species" may profoundly alter a system's dynamics and physical structure in various diverse manners. The phase behavior observed suggests that our system, despite its athermal nature, obeys a minimum free energy principle analogous to that observed for thermodynamic systems. We demonstrate that systems of exclusively spherical objects, which form the basis of numerous theoretical frameworks in many scientific disciplines, represent only a narrow region of a wide, multidimensional phase space. Thus, our results raise significant questions as to whether such models can accurately describe the behaviors of systems outside this highly specialized case.
authors.affiliation: Multiscale Mechanics (MSM), CTW and MESA+, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.|School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: C R K
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Windows-Yule
authors.affiliation: Multiscale Mechanics (MSM), CTW and MESA+, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Scheper
authors.affiliation: Multiscale Mechanics (MSM), CTW and MESA+, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.|Computational Biophysics, TNW and MESA+, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: W K
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: den Otter
authors.affiliation: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Parker
authors.affiliation: Multiscale Mechanics (MSM), CTW and MESA+, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Thornton
mesh_terms: D016880:Anisotropy; D008962:Models, Theoretical