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  • Open Access

Effective particle size as a control parameter for rough hard-particle fluids

Nanqing Xiao1, Zhen Zhang1, Walter Kob1,2,*, and Yujie Wang1,3,4,†

  • *Contact author: walter.kob@umontpellier.fr
  • †Contact author: yujiewang@sjtu.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 043041 – Published 14 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/nqb9-w9r3

Abstract

We numerically investigate how particle surface roughness affects the static and dynamic properties of a hard-particle fluid across a wide range of densities, ρ. These simulations of a simple model of granular systems reveal that, although the amplitude and coverage of surface corrugation significantly influence the ρ dependence of system properties, the qualitative behavior of this dependence remains unchanged. These findings can be described quantitatively by introducing an effective particle size, which enables a direct mapping of the rough particle systems to equivalent hard-disk systems. Analytical calculations provide an explicit form of this mapping and allow us to predict the static and dynamic properties of rough particles using standard liquid-state theories for hard disks.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 043041– Published 14 October, 2026
  • Received 8 April 2026
  • Accepted 12 September 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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