Statistics of Plastic Events in Post-Yield Strain-Controlled Amorphous Solids

• Main Authors: Dubey, Awadhesh K, Hentschel, H. George E, Procaccia, Itamar, Singh, Murari
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 14-04-2016
• Subjects: Physics - Soft Condensed Matter
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1604.04088

Phys. Rev. B 93, 224204 (2016) Amorphous solids yield in strain-controlled protocols at a critical value of
the strain. For larger strains the stress and energy display a generic complex
serrated signal with elastic segments punctuated by sharp energy and stress
plastic drops having a wide range of magnitudes. Here we provide a theory of
the scaling properties of such serrated signals taking into account the
system-size dependence. We show that the statistics are not homogeneous - they
separate sharply to a regime of `small' and `large' drops, each endowed with
its own scaling properties. A scaling theory is first derived solely by data
analysis, showing a somewhat complex picture. But after considering the
physical interpretation one discovers that the scaling behavior and the scaling
exponents are in fact very simple and universal.