English

Percolating Plastic Failure as a Mechanism for Shear Softening in Amorphous Solids

Soft Condensed Matter 2013-12-17 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

``Shear softening" refers to the observed reduction in shear modulus when the stress on an amorphous solid is increased beyond the initial linear region. Careful numerical quasi-static simulations reveal an intimate relation between plastic failure and shear softening. The attaintment of the steady-state value of the shear modulus associated with plastic flow is identified with a percolation of the regions that underwent a plastic event. We present an elementary ``two-state" model that interpolates between failed and virgin regions and provides a simple and effective characterization of the shear softening.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1312.4136,
  title  = {Percolating Plastic Failure as a Mechanism for Shear Softening in Amorphous Solids},
  author = {Vijayakumar Chikkadi and Oleg Gendelman and Valery Ilyin and J Ashwin and Itamar Procaccia},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1312.4136},
  year   = {2013}
}