CODEWITHSUNDEEP
functioncomputational-geometry
Vermillion
Vermillion

Reputation: 1308

Function for densest sphere packing inside a sphere

I'm trying to write a function for the densest packing of identical spheres inside a spherical boundary.

I'm thinking it will be something like spherepack(c,r,n), where:

c - centre of the boundary sphere (x,y,z coordinates)

r - radius of the boundary sphere

n - number of identical spheres to be packed inside the boundary

I want the outputs to be the x,y,z coordinates of the centre of each packed sphere. Does anyone know how this could be done?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 165

Answers (1)

shoulderstack
shoulderstack

Reputation: 57

How about what you might call the 'brute force' method. ie Model what would happen if you had a pile of n unit sized spheres and just tried packing them together in every possible close-packed configuration, and then measured the smallest containing sphere for the pack. I can imagine an algorythm for that, but it is not very programatically efficient, or mathmatically beautiful. Would it have to run fast, or just get the right answer?

Unfortunately, the assumption that close packing is densest is not correct :(

Upvotes: 1

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