Three-dimensional granular deposits characterized by persistent homology

Abstract

This work analyzes the performance of different topological metrics to characterize the three-dimensional structure of a granular sample. In particular, it investigates the problem of granular tapping as it has been shown that different tapping intensities may drive the system to configurations that, sharing the same global packing fraction, are slightly different; hence supposing a challenge in terms of differentiation using only geometrical features.