Related papers: Dynamic Failure in Amorphous Solids via a Cavitati…
Highly-deformable materials, from synthetic hydrogels to biological tissues, are becoming increasingly important from both fundamental and practical perspectives. Their mechanical behaviors, in particular the dynamics of crack propagation…
The shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of plastic deformation predicts that sufficiently soft, non-crystalline solids are linearly unstable against forming periodic arrays of microstructural shear bands. A limited nonlinear analysis…
The aim of this paper is to offer an analytic theory of the shear banding instability in amorphous solids that are subjected to athermal quasi-static shear. To this aim we derive nonlinear equations for the displacement field, including the…
Amorphous solids are mechanically rigid while possessing a disordered structure similar to that of dense liquids. Recent research indicates that dynamical heterogeneity, spatio-temporal fluctuations in local dynamical behavior, might help…
Brittle materials exhibit sharp dynamical fractures when meeting Griffith's criterion, whereas ductile materials blunt a sharp crack by plastic responses. Upon continuous pulling ductile materials exhibit a necking instability which is…
We extend our earlier shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of amorphous plasticity to include the effects of thermally assisted molecular rearrangements. This version of our theory is a substantial revision and generalization of…
One long-lasting puzzle in amorphous solids is shear localization, where local plastic deformation involves cooperative particle rearrangements in small regions of a few inter-particle distances, self-organizing into shear bands and…
We study the stability of amorphous solids, focusing on the distribution P(x) of the local stress increase x that would lead to an instability. We argue that this distribution is singular P(x)x^{\theta}, where the exponent {\theta} is…
In the preceding paper, we developed an athermal shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of amorphous plasticity. Here we use this theory in an analysis of numerical simulations of plasticity in amorphous silicon by Demkowicz and Argon (DA).…
If a porous media is being damaged by excessive stress, the elastic matrix at every infinitesimal volume separates into a 'solid' and a 'broken' component. The 'solid' part is the one that is capable of transferring stress, whereas the…
We investigate dynamic crack propagation and fragmentation with the phase-field fracture approach. The method was chosen for its ability to yield crack paths that are independent of the underlying mesh, thanks to the damage regularization…
We build a mean-field model of plasticity of amorphous solids, based on the dynamics of an ensemble shear transformation zones, interacting via intrinsic dynamical noise generated by the zone flips themselves. We compare the quasi-static,…
We predict a phenomenon of catastrophic material failure arising suddenly within an amorphous material, with an extremely long delay time since the material was last deformed. By simulating a mesoscopic soft glassy rheology model in one…
We numerically investigate the athermal creep deformation of amorphous materials having a wide range of stability. The imposed shear stress serves as the control parameter, allowing us to examine the time-dependent transient response…
In recent work, we developed a screening theory for describing the effect of plastic events in amorphous solids on its emergent mechanics. The suggested theory uncovered an anomalous mechanical response of amorphous solids where plastic…
Cracks, the major vehicle for material failure, tend to accelerate to high velocities in brittle materials. In three-dimensions, cracks generically undergo a micro-branching instability at about 40% of their sonic limiting velocity. Recent…
This study examines the stability of a flexible material interface between two fluids of the same viscosity in interaction with a free surface. When the layers are motionless, we provide evidence for the onset of a novel instability by…
Understanding the mechanical instabilities of two-dimensional membranes has strong connection to the subjects of structure instabilities, morphology control and materials failures. In this work, we investigate the plastic mechanism…
Amorphous solids tend to present an abundance of soft elastic modes, which diminish their transport properties, generate heterogeneities in their elastic response, and affect non-linear processes like thermal activation of plasticity. This…
We consider a microscopic model for the failure of soft adhesives in tension based on ideas of bond rupture under dynamic loading. Focusing on adhesive failure under loading at constant velocity, we demonstrate that bi-modal curves of…