Abstract
Using cyclic shear to drive a two dimensional granular system, we determine the structural char-acteristics for different inter-particle friction coefficients. These characteristics are the result of acompetition between mechanical stability and entropy, with the latter’s effect increasing with fric-tion. We show that a parameter-free maximum-entropy argument alone predicts an exponential cell order distribution, with excellent agreement with the experimental observation. We show thatfriction only tunes the mean cell order and, consequently, the exponential decay rate and the pack-ing fraction. We further show that cells, which can be very large in such systems, are short-lived,implying that our systems are liquid-like rather than glassy..