  Granulate 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 irregular particles. An
overview of this research field is given.
