Although many phenomena observed in granular materials are still not yet fully understood, important contributions have been made to further our understanding using modern tools from statistical mechanics. These tools apply to disordered systems, phase transitions, instabilities or intermittent beha ...

Although many phenomena observed in granular materials are still not yet fully understood, important contributions have been made to further our understanding using modern tools from statistical mechanics. These tools apply to disordered systems, phase transitions, instabilities or intermittent behavior and the performance of discrete particle simulations on the latest and most powerful computers. Until now, however, many of these results were only to be found scattered throughout the physics literature. Furthermore, physicists are often unaware of the theories and results published by engineers in more specialized technical journals. The journal Granular Matter thus serves as a platform of communication among researchers of various disciplines who are involved in the basic research of granular media. It helps to establish a common language and gather articles under one single roof that up to now have been spread over many journals in a variety of fields.