Related papers: Brittle to ductile transitions in glasses: Roles o…
The presence of dynamical heterogeneities, i.e. nanometer-scale regions containing molecules rearranging cooperatively at very different rates compared to the bulk, is increasingly being recognized as crucial in our understanding of the…
We present an event-driven molecular dynamics study of glass formation in two-dimensional binary mixtures composed of hard disks and hard ellipses, where both types of particles have the same area. We demonstrate that characteristic…
The similarity in atomic structure between liquids and glasses has stimulated a long-standing hypothesis that the nature of glasses may be more fluid like, rather than an apparent solid. In principle, the nature of glasses can be…
Theoretical analyses and experiments have been carried out to investigate fracture behavior of glassy polymers. Our birefringence measurements quantify the local stress buildup at cut tip during different stages of drawing. Based on…
Glasses are mechanically rigid, still undergo structural relaxation which changes their properties and affects potential technological applications. Understanding the underlying physical processes is a problem of broad theoretical and…
Recent ideas based on the properties of assemblies of frictionless particles in mechanical equilibrium provide a perspective of amorphous systems different from that offered by the traditional approach originating in liquid theory. The…
Neutron irradiation in structural alloys promotes defect clustering, which suppresses plasticity and triggers a ductile-to-brittle transition (DBT), a key degradation mechanism limiting fracture resistance in nuclear materials. This study…
We theoretically investigate the glass-transition problem for a quasi-two-dimensional colloidal dense suspension modulated by a one-dimensional periodic external potential as imposed by interfering laser beams. Relying on a mode-coupling…
Fracture processes in multi-phase solids are inherently complex due to multiple competing mechanisms. Here, we investigate the elastic and fracture behaviour of two-phase solids, comprising a fragile phase and a tough phase using a…
We address the question of why larger, high symmetry crystals are mostly weak, ductile and statistically sub-critical, while smaller crystals with the same symmetry are strong, brittle and super-critical. We link it to another question of…
The nature of glassy states in realistic finite dimensions is still under fierce debate. Lattice models can offer valuable insights and facilitate deeper theoretical understanding. Recently, a disordered-interacting lattice model with…
Using positional data from video-microscopy of a two-dimensional colloidal system and from simulations of hard discs we determine the wave-vector-dependent normal mode spring constants in the supercooled fluid and glassy state,…
This study examines the roughness of mechanically cleaved edges in 2D crystals and glasses using molecular dynamics simulations with chemically accurate machine-learning force fields. Our results show that ultra-flat armchair and zigzag…
Sessile hydrogel drops on rigid surfaces exhibit wetting/contact morphology intermediate between liquid drops and glass spheres. Using density functional theory, we reveal the contact forces acting between a hydrogel and a rigid glass…
Recent advances in computational glass physics enable the study of computer glasses featuring a very wide range of mechanical and kinetic stabilities. The current literature, however, lacks a comprehensive data set against which different…
Despite the use of glasses for thousands of years, the nature of the glass transition is still mysterious. On approaching the glass transition, the growth of dynamic heterogeneity has long been thought to play a key role in explaining the…
We study the solid-to-liquid transition in a two-dimensional fully periodic soft-glassy model with an imposed spatially heterogeneous stress. The model we consider consists of droplets of a dispersed phase jammed together in a continuous…
In molecular dynamics simulations of soft glass-formers interacting via repulsions, we find that the glass transition temperature, dynamical heterogeneity, and glass fragility reach their maxima at the same crossover pressure $P_d$. Our…
Using computer simulations, we identify the mechanisms causing aggregation and structural arrest of colloidal suspensions interacting with a short-ranged attraction at moderate and high densities. Two different non-ergodicity transitions…
Brittle-ductile transition (BDT) is an important characteristic of amorphous (and semicrystalline) polymers. For a given strain rate, at temperatures above BDT, the polymers exhibit strain softening followed by yield and strain hardening,…