  In this numerical study, measurements of the contact forces inside a periodic
two-dimensional sheared system of soft frictional particles are reported. The
distribution of normalized normal forces exhibits a gradual broadening with
increasing the pure shear deformation, leading to a slower decay for large
forces. The process however slows down and the distribution approaches an
invariant shape at high shear deformations. By introducing the joint
probability distribution in sheared configurations, it is shown that for a
fixed direction, the force distribution decays faster than exponentially even
in a sheared system. The overall broadening can be attributed to the averaging
over different directions in the presence of shear-induced stress anisotropy.
The distribution of normalized tangential forces almost preserves its shape for
arbitrary applied strain.
