Phys.org  September 1, 2022 Force chains are quasi-linear self-organised structures carrying large stresses and are ubiquitous in jammed amorphous materials like granular materials, foams or even cell assemblies. Understanding force chains is crucial in describing the mechanical and transport properties of granular solids and this applies in a wide range of circumstances—for example how sound propagates or how sand responds to mechanical deformation. Predicting where they will form upon deformation is crucial to describe the properties of such materials but remains an open question. An international team of researchers (Germany, Belgium, UK) demonstrated that graph neural networks (GNN) can accurately […]