These particles are sheared in a 2D Couette device, and we otain force and positional information.
Several results are interesting.
At this value, the compressibility diverges, there is strong intermittency and critical slowing down occurs. The length of stress chains grows as this point is approached. The force distributions are exponential for dense packings, but suggestive of powerlaws for near-critical packings. The velocity profile is roughly exponential in the distance from the shearing surface, with gaussian corrections. At the shearing surface, there is little slipping for dense systems because of particle rotation.