%0 Journal Article
%T What determines force chains in granular media?
%A Oleg Gendelman
%A Yoav G. Pollack
%A Itamar Procaccia
%A Shiladitya Sengupta
%A Jacques Zylberg
%J Physics
%D 2015
%I arXiv
%X The determination of the normal and transverse (frictional) inter-particle forces within a granular medium is a long standing, taunting, and yet unresolved problem. We present a new formalism which employs the knowledge of the external forces and the orientations of contacts between particles (of any given sizes), to compute all the inter-particle forces. Having solved this problem we exemplify the efficacy of the formalism showing that the force chains in such systems are determined by an expansion in the eigenfunctions of a newly defined operator.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.06626v2