It is shown that by properly controlling vibrational and charging conditions, the transition from disordered to ordered, densest packing of particles can be obtained consistently. The method applies to both spherical and nonspherical particles. For spheres, face centered cubic packing with different orientations can be achieved by monitoring the vibration amplitude and frequency, and the structure of the bottom layer, in particular. The resultant force structures are ordered but do not necessarily correspond to the packing structures fully. The implications of the findings are also discussed.

ised in terms of porosity, coordination number and radial distribution function, and the particle–particle or pore–pore connectivity is analysed with the Voronoi or Delaunay tessellation. The force structures and their link with jamming states are also discussed. Structural properties are shown to be correlated with porosity which links directly to the cohesive force acting on a particle.

Micro structures of equal sphere packing (ranging from loose to dense packing) generated numerically by discrete element method under different vibration conditions are characterized using Voronoi/Delaunay tessellation, which is applied on a wide range of packing densities. The analysis on micro properties such as the total perimeter, surface area, and the face number distribution of each Voronoi polyhedron, and the pore size distribution in each Voronoi/Delaunay subunit is systematically carried out. The results show that with the increasing density of sphere packing, the Voronoi/Delaunay pore size distribution is narrowed. That indicates large pores to be gradually substituted by small uniformed ones during densification. Meanwhile, the distributions of face number, total perimeter, and surface area of Voronoi polyhedra at high packing densities tend to be narrower and higher, which is in good agreement with those in random loose packing.