ABSTRACT
Granular materials undergoing shear strain constitute one of the last examples of everyday, macroscopic, unresolved physics problems. The situation occurs in a wide variety of industrial and natural processes (Liu & Nagel 1998) and so there is much to be gained by a deeper understanding of the issues involved.The study of granular materials may also, by virtue of its interdisciplinarity, contribute to our general understanding of the physics of complex systems (Umbanhowar 2003).
