Granular materials composed of shape-anisotropic grains

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Granular physics has made considerable progress during the past decades in the understanding of static and dynamic properties of large ensembles of interacting macroscopic particles, including the modeling of phenomena like jamming, segregation and pattern formation, the development of related industrial applications or traffic flow control. The specific properties of systems composed of shape-anisotropic (elongated or flattened) particles have attracted increasing interest in recent years. Orientational order and self-organization are among the characteristic phenomena that add to the special features of granular matter of spherical or irregularly shaped particles. An overview of this research field is given.