Rheology and structure of polydisperse three-dimensional packings of spheres

We use three-dimensional contact dynamics simulations to analyze the rheology of polydisperse packings of spherical particles subjected to simple shear. The macroscopic and microstructural properties of several packings are analyzed as a function of their size span (from nearly monodisperse to highly polydisperse). Consistently with previous two-dimensional simulations, we find that the shear strength is independent of the size span despite the...