  Deformation and orientation effects on compression, elliptic flow and
particle production in uranium on uranium collisions (UU) at relativistic
energies are studied within the transport model ART. The density compression in
tip-tip UU collisions is found to be about 30% higher and lasts approximately
50% longer than in body-body or spherical UU reactions. The body-body UU
collisions have the unique feature that the nucleon elliptic flow is the
highest in the most central collisions and remain a constant throughout the
reaction. We point out that the tip-tip UU collisions are more probable to
create the QGP at AGS and SPS energies while the body-body UU collisions are
more useful for studying properties of the QGP at higher energies.
