Related papers: Elasto-plastic description of brittle failure in a…
We study the response of F-actin bundles to driving forces through a simple analytical model. We consider two filaments connected by reversibly bound crosslinks and driven by an external force. Two failure modes under load can be defined.…
We study an integer automaton elasto-plastic model of an amorphous solid subject to cyclic shear of amplitude $\Gamma$. We focus on the reversible plastic regime at intermediate $\Gamma_0<\Gamma<\Gamma_y$, where, after a transient, the…
We show numerically that the response of simple amorphous solids (elastic networks and particle packings) to a local force dipole is characterized by a lengthscale $\ell_c$ that diverges as unjamming is approached as $\ell_c \sim (z -…
Using numerical simulations, we consider an amorphous particle mixture which exhibits shear banding, and find that the addition of even a small fraction of chains strongly enhances the material strength, creating pronounced overshoot…
The yielding transition of amorphous materials is studied with a two-dimensional Hamiltonian model that allows both shear and volume deformations. The model is investigated as a function of the relative value of the bulk modulus $B$ with…
Amorphous particulate matter constitutes a wide range of natural and synthetic materials. Despite this ubiquity, the way in which these systems' disordered microstructure couples to their often subtle and complex dynamical behavior is not…
The strain load $\Delta\gamma$ that triggers consecutive avalanches is a key observable in the slow deformation of amorphous solids. Its temporally averaged value $\langle \Delta\gamma \rangle$ displays a non-trivial system-size dependence…
In this work we study the rheological features of yield stress materials that exhibit non-homogeneous steady flows and that are subjected to an additional mechanical noise. Using a mesoscale elasto-plastic model accounting for a viscosity…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
The rheological properties of biological tissues are core to processes such as cancer metastasis, wound healing and embryo development. The emergence of tissue and organ structures during morphogenesis requires the precise formation of…
Stress-strain relations for random packings of entangling chains under triaxial compression can exhibit strain stiffening and sustain stresses several orders-of-magnitude beyond typical granular materials. X-ray tomography reveals the…
Amorphous solids that underwent a strain in one direction such that they responded in a plastic manner `remember' that direction also when relaxed back to a state with zero mean stress. We address the question `what is the order parameter…
It is shown here that fracture after a brief plastic strain, typically of a few percents, is a necessary consequence of the polycrystalline nature of the materials. The polycrystal undergoing plastic deformation is modeled as a flowing…
The accurate measurement of fracture resistance in elastomers is essential for predicting the mechanical limits of soft devices. Usually, this is achieved by performing tearing or peeling experiments on thin-sheet samples. Here, we show…
Disordered athermal biopolymer materials, such as collagen networks that constitute a major component in extracellular matrices and various connective tissues, are initially soft and compliant but stiffen dramatically under strain. Such…
Quasi-brittle behavior where macroscopic failure is preceded by stable damaging and intensive cracking activity is a desired feature of materials because it makes fracture predictable. Based on a fiber bundle model with global load sharing…
We analyse the flow curves of a two-dimensional assembly of granular particles which are interacting via frictional contact forces. For packing fractions slightly below jamming, the fluid undergoes a large scale instability, implying a…
We study a mesoscopic elasto-plastic model of amorphous matter with varying dimensionless compression modulus, $K/\mu$, where $K$ and $\mu$ are the compression and shear moduli. We study both cyclic shear with amplitude $\Gamma$ and forward…
Crystal plasticity occurs by deformation bursts due to the avalanche-like motion of dislocations. Here we perform extensive numerical simulations of a three-dimensional dislocation dynamics model under quasistatic stress-controlled loading.…
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…