Yielding behavior in amorphous solids has been investigated in computer simulations using uniform and cyclic shear deformation. Recent results characterize yielding as a discontinuous transition, with the degree of annealing of glasses being a significant parameter. Under uniform shear, discontinuous changes in stresses at yielding occur in the high annealing regime, separated from the poor annealing regime in which yielding is gradual. In cyclic shear simulations, relatively poorly annealed glasses become progressively better annealed as the yielding point is approached, with a relatively modest but clear discontinuous change at yielding. To understand better the role of annealing on yielding characteristics, we perform athermal quasistatic cyclic shear simulations of glasses prepared with a wide range of annealing in two qualitatively different systems—a model of silica (a network glass) and an atomic binary mixture glass. Two strikingly different regimes of behavior emerge. Energies of poorly annealed samples evolve toward a unique threshold energy as the strain amplitude increases, before yielding takes place. Well-annealed samples, in contrast, show no significant energy change with strain amplitude until they yield, accompanied by discontinuous energy changes that increase with the degree of annealing. Significantly, the threshold energy for both systems corresponds to dynamical cross-over temperatures associated with changes in the character of the energy landscape sampled by glass-forming liquids.

A dissipative sandpile model (DSM) is constructed and studied on small world networks (SWN). SWNs are generated adding extra links between two arbitrary sites of a two dimensional square lattice with different shortcut densities φ. Three different regimes are identified as regular lattice (RL) for φ 2 −12 , SWN for 2 −12 < φ < 0.1 and random network (RN) for φ ≥ 0.1. In the RL regime, the sandpile dynamics is characterized by usual Bak, Tang, Weisenfeld (BTW) type correlated scaling whereas in the RN regime it is characterized by the mean field (MF) scaling. On SWN, both the scaling behaviors are found to coexist. Small compact avalanches below certain characteristic size sc are found to belong to the BTW universality class whereas large, sparse avalanches above sc are found to belong to the MF universality class. A scaling theory for the coexistence of two scaling forms on SWN is developed and numerically verified. Though finite size scaling (FSS) is not valid for DSM on RL as well as on SWN, it is found to be valid on RN for the same model. FSS on RN is appeared to be an outcome of super diffusive sand transport and uncorrelated toppling waves.

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In the rotational sandpile model, either the clockwise or the anti-clockwise toppling rule is assigned to all the lattice sites. It has all the features of a stochastic sandpile model but belongs to a different universality class than the Manna class. A crossover from rotational to Manna universality class is studied by constructing a random rotational sandpile model and assigning randomly clockwise and anti-clockwise rotational toppling rules to the lattice sites. The steady state and the respective critical behaviour of the present model are found to have a strong and continuous dependence on the fraction of the lattice sites having the anti-clockwise (or clockwise) rotational toppling rule. As the anti-clockwise and clockwise toppling rules exist in equal proportions, it is found that the model reproduces critical behaviour of the Manna model. It is then further evidence of the existence of the Manna class, in contradiction with some recent observations of the non-existence of the Manna class.

A dissipative stochastic sandpile model is constructed and studied on small-world networks in one and two dimensions with different shortcut densities ϕ, where ϕ=0 represents regular lattice and ϕ=1 represents random network. The effect of dimension, network topology, and specific dissipation mode (bulk or boundary) on the the steady-state critical properties of nondissipative and dissipative avalanches along with all avalanches are analyzed. Though the distributions of all avalanches and nondissipative avalanches display stochastic scaling at ϕ=0 and mean-field scaling at ϕ=1, the dissipative avalanches display nontrivial critical properties at ϕ=0 and 1 in both one and two dimensions. In the small-world regime (2^{-12}≤ϕ≤0.1), the size distributions of different types of avalanches are found to exhibit more than one power-law scaling with different scaling exponents around a crossover toppling size s_{c}. Stochastic scaling is found to occur for ss_{c}. As different scaling forms are found to coexist in a single probability distribution, a coexistence scaling theory on small world network is developed and numerically verified.