The role of curvature in the jamming of hard spheres on the surface of a spheroid

Using various packing protocols, we investigate numerically the jamming of spherical particles that are constrained to the surface of a larger, host spheroid. While jamming has been extensively investigated for different particle shapes and containers, the role played by curvature in the frustration that arises when spherical particles are adsorbed to curved interfaces is not yet well understood. Accordingly, we explore the dependence of the critical particle coverage fraction $\Phi$ required for jamming to occur upon the number and polydispersity of the smaller particles as well as the shape and relative size of the host spheroid. Along the way, we evaluate the relative efficiency of the numerical algorithms we employ in terms of their efficiency and their relevance to the physics of recent experiments in microfluidics and colloid deposition on curved surfaces.