Elasto-plastic behavior of amorphous materials: a brief review

Abstract

Disordered materials, like metallic glasses or silicate glasses, have an atomistic amorphous structure preventing the formation of extended defects such as dislocations. Irreversible deformation in these materials is thus localized, but can organize along shear bands. In this brief review, based on recent publications, we will see if local plasticity can be measured and predicted in disordered atomic assemblies, and in what conditions it can be related to preexisting structural defects. We will then draw a general picture of the plastic mechanical behaviour within the theoretical framework of mechanical instabilities. Finally, we will focus our attention on different scenarii for shear banding in glasses.

Implementation and calibration of a mesoscale model for amorphous plasticity based on shear transformation dynamics

“…We follow Argon's theory who idealised the individual STZs as spheres to calculate the energy barrier for STZ activation via Eshelby's solution for an unstressed solid comprising a spherical material domain subjected to a pure shear eigenstrain. Recent molecular dynamics calculations support this idealisation(Tanguy, 2021).…”

“…There is strong evidence suggesting that the STZ properties (and the surrounding material stiffness) are heterogeneously distributed in an amorphous solid (Boioli et al, 2017;Tanguy, 2021;. Atomistic calculation data indicate that transformation shear strains follow a distribution that can be approximately represented by a decaying exponential from a maximum value (Albaret et al, 2016).…”

“…There is a growing interest in the use of shear transformation zone (STZ) dynamics to model the inelastic response of amorphous materials at the mesoscale (Tanguy, 2021). Shear transformation theory was originally developed by Argon and co-workers (Argon, 1979;Argon and Kuo, 1979;Argon and Shi, 1983) to describe the viscoplastic behaviour of metallic glasses.…”

Mapping and Modeling Physicochemical Fields in Solid-State Batteries

“…63 We note that plasticity is a relatively "old" topic in metallurgy which has been well studied in the past both experimentally and computationally. 64 Modeling and experimental characterization techniques are relatively welldeveloped in the general materials science discipline, which, however, have not been widely applied to studying battery materials in particular. 65,66 Plastic deformation was shown to be associated with extended defects in metals, such as dislocations.…”

Foreword: Plasticity and Solid State Physics

“…Such an approach is illustrated by Clouet et al [5] who used ab initio calculations of dislocation core properties to predict the yield stress of single crystals of tungsten. A similar multiscale approach may also be used in amorphous solids where elementary processes of deformation take place in rather elusive shear transformation zones that organize along microscopic shear bands as discussed by Tanguy [6].…”