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Randomly Packed and Solidly Packed Spheres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

E. N. Gilbert
E. N. Gilbert*
Affiliation:
Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey
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In the classical packing problem unit spheres are placed without overlapping in D-dimensional space. When D = 2, the densest packing is a familiar regular arrangement of circles, each circle touching six others. In this packing, circles cover a fraction π/√12 = 0.9069 . . . of the area of the plane. The densest packing is not known for D ≥ 3.

Most of the packings to be considered here use spheres of many different sizes. In this way greater densities are obtainable; small spheres can fill up some of the space left over after large spheres have been packed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Mathematics , Volume 16 , 1964 , pp. 286 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Mathematical Society 1964

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