ABSTRACT
Dense flows of cohesionless granular materials have been recently the focus of various experimental and numerical studies (GDR MIDI 2004). Within the simple plane shear geometry, with prescribed pressure and shear rate, it was possible to identify the constitutive law, that is to say the dependency of the stress components on the shear rate (da Cruz et al. 2005). In particular, the integration of the friction law in Saint-Venant codes allows large scale simulations of granular flows (Pouliquen and Forterre 2002; Naaim et al. 2004).
