Randomly Packed and Solidly Packed Spheres

Abstract

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.