Related papers: Effect of nematic ordering on the elasticity and y…
We perform thorough molecular-dynamics simulations to compare elasticity and yielding of atomic crystals and model semicrystalline polymers, the latter characterized by very similar positional ordering with respect to atomic crystals and…
We examine how the distribution of contour lengths and the high-stretch stiffening of individual chain segments affect the macroscopic shear modulus of flexible polymer gels, using a 2D numerical model, in which polymer segments form a…
We study shear yielding and steady state flow of glassy materials with molecular dynamics simulations of two standard models: amorphous polymers and bidisperse Lennard-Jones glasses. For a fixed strain rate, the maximum shear yield stress…
The shear-banding instability in quasi-statically driven bulk metallic glasses emerges from collective dynamics, mediated by shear transformation zones and associated non-local elastic interactions. It is also phenomenologically known that…
The effect of alternating shear orientation during cyclic loading on the relaxation dynamics in disordered solids is examined using molecular dynamics simulations. The model glass was initially prepared by rapid cooling from the liquid…
We report results of non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of a one-component glassy system under the influence of a shear flow, with the aim of investigating shear induced ordering of this system. In spite of the very low…
We map out the solid-state morphologies formed by model soft-pearl-necklace polymers as a function of bending stiffness $k_b$ spanning the range from fully flexible to rodlike chains. The ratio of Kuhn length to bead diameter ($l_K/r_0$)…
A self-interacting polymer can undergo an orientational ordering transition, depending on the magnitude of the nematic interaction. The effect of embedding such a polymer into a flexible surface on this transition is studied on the…
We investigate the mechanical properties of amorphous polymers by means of coarse-grained simulations and nonaffine lattice dynamics theory. A small increase of polymer chain bending stiffness leads first to softening of the material, while…
Highly acurate numerical simulations are employed to highlight the subtle but important differences in the mechanical stability of perfect crystalline solids versus amorphous solids. We stress the difference between strain values at which…
Sheared multi-component bulk metallic glasses are characterized by both chemical and structural disorder that define their properties. We investigate the behavior of the local, microstructural elastic modulus across the plastic yielding…
Amorphous materials such as metallic, polymeric, and colloidal glasses, exhibit complex preparation-dependent mechanical response to applied shear. We perform numerical simulations to investigate the mechanical response of binary…
When nematic liquid crystals are embedded in random polymer networks, the disordered environment disrupts the long-range order, producing a glassy state. If an electric field is applied, it induces large and fairly temperature-independent…
We study elasticity of spontaneously orientationally-ordered amorphous solids, characterized by a vanishing transverse shear modulus, as realized for example by nematic elastomers and gels. We show that local heterogeneities and elastic…
Due to the lack of long-range order, it remains challenging to characterize the structure of disordered solids and understand the nature of the glass transition. Here we propose a new structural order parameter by taking into account…
Glasses and gels, widely encountered amorphous solids with diverse industrial and everyday applications, share intriguing similarities such as rigidity without crystalline order and dynamic slowing down during aging. However, the underlying…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we provide chain-level insights into the dissimilarities in rearrangements of polymers under uniaxial tensile and compressive deformation in glassy and semicrystalline samples of varying chain lengths.…
The correlation between local structure and the propensity for structural rearrangements has been widely investigated in glass forming liquids and glasses. In this paper we use the excess two-body entropy $S_2$ and tetrahedrality $\n_{tet}$…
The mechanical properties of amorphous solids like metallic glasses can be dramatically changed by adding small concentrations (as low as 0.1\%) of foreign elements. The glass-forming-ability, the ductility, the yield stress and the elastic…
Computer simulations of yielding of glasses under shear have typically been performed under constant volume, strain controlled protocols. However, volumetric effects, such as the dilatancy associated with plastic rearrangements, and the…