  The evolution of the force distributions during the isotropic compression of
two dimensional packings of soft frictional particles is investigated
numerically. Regardless of the applied deformation, the normal contact force
distribution can be fitted by the product of a power-law, and a stretched
exponential, while the tangential force distribution is fitted well by a
Gaussian. With increasing strain, the asymptotic behavior at large forces does
not change, but both normal and tangential distributions exhibit a broadening,
even though, when scaled with the average forces, their widths decrease.
Furthermore, the distribution of friction mobilization is a decreasing function
of the mobilization, except for an increased probability of fully mobilized
contacts. The excess coordination number of the packings increases with the
applied strain, indicating that the more a packing is compressed the more
stable it becomes.
