Scaling description of the yielding transition in soft amorphous solids at zero temperature

Abstract

Yield stress materials flow if a sufficiently large shear stress is applied. Although such materials are ubiquitous and relevant for industry, there is no accepted microscopic description of how they yield, even in the simplest situations in which temperature is negligible and in which flow inhomogeneities such as shear bands or fractures are absent. Here we propose a scaling description of the yielding transition in amorphous solids made of soft particles at zero temperature. Our description makes a connection between the Herschel-Bulkley exponent characterizing the singularity of the flow curve near the yield stress Σ c , the extension and duration of the avalanches of plasticity observed at threshold, and the density P(x) of soft spots, or shear transformation zones, as a function of the stress increment x beyond which they yield. We argue that the critical exponents of the yielding transition may be expressed in terms of three independent exponents, θ, d f , and z, characterizing, respectively, the density of soft spots, the fractal dimension of the avalanches, and their duration. Our description shares some similarity with the depinning transition that occurs when an elastic manifold is driven through a random potential, but also presents some striking differences. We test our arguments in an elastoplastic model, an automaton model similar to those used in depinning, but with a different interaction kernel, and find satisfying agreement with our predictions in both two and three dimensions. M any solids will flow and behave as fluids if a sufficiently large shear stress is applied. In crystals, plasticity is governed by the motion of dislocations (1, 2). In amorphous solids, there is no order, and conserved defects cannot be defined. However, as noticed by Argon (3), plasticity consists of elementary events localized in space, called shear transformations, in which a few particles rearrange. This observation supports that there are special locations in the sample, called shear transformation zones (STZs) (4), in which the system lies close to an elastic instability. Several theoretical approaches of plasticity, such as STZ theory (4) or soft glassy rheology (5), assume that such zones relax independently or are coupled to each other via an effective temperature. However, at zero temperature and small applied strain rate _ γ, computer experiments (6-11) and very recent experiments (12, 13) indicate that local rearrangements are not independent: plasticity occurs via avalanches in which many shear transformations are involved, forming elongated structures in which plasticity localizes. If conditions are such that flow is homogeneous (as may occur, for example, in foams or emulsions), one finds that the flow curves are singular at small strain rate and follow a Herschel-Bulkley law Σ − Σ c ∼ _ γ 1=β (14, 15). These features are reproduced qualitatively by elasto-plastic models (16)(17)(18)(19)(20) in which space is discretized. In these models, a site that yields plastically affects the stress in its surroundi...

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