Related papers: Microscopic description of the intermittent dynami…
When submitted to a constant mechanical load, many amorphous solids display power law creep followed by fluidization. A fundamental understanding of these processes is still far from being achieved. Here, we characterize creep and…
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 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…
Physical systems characterized by stick-slip dynamics often display avalanches. Regardless of the diversity of their microscopic structure, these systems are governed by a power-law distribution of avalanche size and duration. Here we focus…
We investigate thermal avalanche dynamics in amorphous solids using elastoplastic models with local activation rules and no external driving. Dynamical heterogeneities, quantified through persistence measurements and the associated…
Amorphous solids are yield stress materials that flow when a sufficient load is applied. Their flow consists of periods of elastic loading interrupted by rapid stress drops, or avalanches, coming from microscopic rearrangements known as…
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…
A general kind of models with hierarchically constrained dynamics is shown to exhibit logarithmic anomalous relaxation, similarly to a variety of complex strongly interacting materials. The logarithmic behavior describes most of the decay…
We use computer simulations to study the relaxation dynamics of a model for oil-in-water microemulsion droplets linked with telechelic polymers. This system exhibits both gel and glass phases and we show that the competition between these…
We report avalanche criticality of thermal relaxation in glassy systems after a rapid quench by molecular simulation. Our analysis of the energy landscape and the scaling reveals that particle rearrangement is critical. The critical…
Several papers have recently presented results of measurements of physical aging by studying the behavior of glassy materials quenched from temperatures above their glass transition temperature $T_g$. The evolution of the aging process is…
Creep mechanisms in uniaxially compressed 3D granular solids comprised of faceted frictionless grains are studied numerically using a constant pressure and constant stress simulation method. Rapid uniaxial compression followed by slow…
Molecular dynamics computer simulations of a binary Lennard-Jones glass under shear are presented. The mechanical response of glassy states having different thermal histories is investigated by imposing a wide range of external shear rates,…
We study the statistical properties of the yielding transition in model amorphous solids in the limit of slow, athermal deformation. Plastic flow occurs via alternating phases of elastic loading punctuated by rapid dissipative events in the…
A minimal athermal model for the flow of dense disordered materials is proposed, based on two generic ingredients: local plastic events occuring above a microscopic yield stress, and the non-local elastic release of the stress these events…
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.…
Using molecular simulations, we identify microscopic relaxation events of individual particles in ageing structural glasses, and determine the full distribution of relaxation times. We find that the memory of the waiting time $t_w$ elapsed…
The slow flow of amorphous solids exhibits striking heterogeneities: swift localised particle rearrangements take place in the midst of a more or less homogeneously deforming medium. Recently, experimental as well as numerical work has…
Supercooled liquids display dynamics that are inherently heterogeneous in space. This essentially means that at temperatures below the melting point, particle dynamics in certain regions of the liquid can be orders of magnitude faster than…
The dynamical properties and mechanical functions of amorphous materials are governed by their microscopic structures, particularly the elasticity of the interaction networks, which is generally complicated by structural heterogeneity. This…