Medical CT Application in the Study of 3D Random Packing of Ellipsoids

The particle random packing problem is important for both physics and engineering applications. The study of random ellipsoid packing, as the generalization of the spherical one, is difficult owing to the complexity introduced by the rotational degrees of freedom. However, the study of ellipsoid particle packing is more relevant to realistic applications since the ellipsoid shapes are closer to real particles in nature. Here we present the technical details of the application of medical CT for the study of three-dimensional ellipsoid random packings, e.g., how to obtain three-dimensional geometric information like positions, orientations, and volumes of ellipsoids by image processing techniques from the tomography data; how to extract the ellipsoids' contact information by scaling function analysis. This study provides useful technical information for the application of X-ray tomography technique on the study of the granular packing.