A non-local plasticity theory for slow granular flows

Motivated by experimental observations of apparent non-locality in the mechanical response of granular materials, a few recent studies have proposed non-local rheological models. Though their predictions agree with some aspects of experimental observations, the tenets of the models are not experimentally verified, nor do they have an experimentally verifiable or plausible mechanical basis. Here we present a non-local model that is based on the simple idea of volume averaging, and show that it overcomes many of the shortcomings of the previously proposed models, and is superior in its predictive capabilities