Random packing of hard spherocylinders

Random packings have been studied using computer simulations for some time, but there is no agreement on the best way to obtain them, especially for nonspherical particles. The present work focuses on random packing of hard spherocylinders. Starting from the mechanical contraction method (Williams and Philipse. Phys. Rev. E 2003, 67, 051301), a modification is introduced that makes it easier to obtain reproducible values, by simplifying the selection of some parameters. Furthermore, it is found that the final packings can be compressed further using Monte Carlo style particle moves. Random packings were generated for a wide range of aspect ratios, 0 ≤ L/D ≤ 40, and it was verified that the final packings do not show positional nor orientational ordering.