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This work presents a particle packing method based on a distance minimization procedure with non-uniform sizes and prescribed filling ratio. In the study of engineering problems involving granular systems, like those that employ numerical tools such as the discrete element method, an important modeling task is to produce the initial geometric configuration for a given set of particles. Several methods of particle packing are currently employed for this purpose. In this work, the employed methodology uses the Levenberg–Marquardt minimization strategy and does not require a mesh to generate the initial geometric configuration for the particle set. Also, the technique aims a good approximation for the input parameters of granular media, such as grain size distribution and filling ratio. The proposed methodology is divided into four macro-steps: (a) definition of the initial particle assembly, (b) distance …