Assemblies of granular particles mechanically stable under their own weight contain arches. These are structural units identi ed as mutually stable grains. It is generally assumed that these arches shield the weight above them and should bear most of the stress in the system. We test such hypothesis by studying the stress born by in-arch and out-of-arch grains. We show that, in average, particles in arches withstand larger stresses. However, out-of-arch grains with large stresses and in-arch grains with low stresses exist and the two populations cannot be distinguished by simply looking at the stress distributions.
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