  We report on experimentally observed shear stress fluctuations in both
granular solid and fluid states, showing that they are non-Gaussian at low
shear rates, reflecting the predominance of correlated structures (force
chains) in the solidlike phase, which also exhibit finite rigidity to shear.
Peaks in the rigidity and the stress distribution's skewness indicate that a
change to the force-bearing mechanism occurs at the transition to fluid
behaviour, which, it is shown, can be predicted from the behaviour of the
stress at lower shear rates. In the fluid state stress is Gaussian distributed,
suggesting that the central limit theorem holds. The fibre bundle model with
random load sharing effectively reproduces the stress distribution at the yield
point and also exhibits the exponential stress distribution anticipated from
extant work on stress propagation in granular materials.
