  A rigid-plastic Cosserat model has been used to study dense, fully developed
flow of granular materials through a vertical channel. Frictional models based
on the classical continuum do not predict the occurrence of shear layers, at
variance with experimental observations. This feature has been attributed to
the absence of a material length scale in their constitutive equations. The
present model incorporates such a material length scale by treating the
granular material as a Cosserat continuum. Thus localised couple stresses exist
and the stress tensor is asymmetric. The velocity profiles predicted by the
model are in close agreement with available experimental data. The predicted
dependence of the shear layer thickness on the width of the channel is in
reasonable agreement with data. In the limit of the ratio of the particle
diameter to the half-width of the channel being small, the model predicts that
the shear layer thickness scaled by the particle diameter grows.
