Continuum percolation of congruent overlapping spherocylinders.

Abstract

Continuum percolation of randomly orientated congruent overlapping spherocylinders (composed of cylinder of height H with semispheres of diameter D at the ends) with aspect ratio α=H/D in [0,∞) is studied. The percolation threshold ϕ_{c}, percolation transition width Δ, and correlation-length critical exponent ν for spherocylinders with α in [0, 200] are determined with a high degree of accuracy via extensive finite-size scaling analysis. A generalized excluded-volume approximation for percolation threshold with an exponent explicitly depending on both aspect ratio and excluded volume for arbitrary α values in [0,∞) is proposed and shown to yield accurate predictions of ϕ_{c} for an extremely wide range of α in [0, 2000] based on available numerical and experimental data. We find ϕ_{c} is a universal monotonic decreasing function of α and is independent of the effective particle size. Our study has implications in percolation theory for nonspherical particles and composite material design.