Experiments on a slowly sheared 2D granular material show a continuous transition as the packing fraction γ passes through γc0.776. The mean stress, σ, plays the role of an order parameter. As γ→γc from above, (1) the compressibility becomes large, (2) a slowing down of the mean velocity occurs, (3) the force distributions change, and (4) the network of stress chains changes from intermittent long radial chains near γc to a tangled dense network for larger γ.
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Howell et al. (1999) studied this question.
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