title: Universal breakdown of elasticity at the onset of material failure.
abstract: We show that, in the athermal quasistatic deformation of amorphous materials, the onset of failure is accompanied by universal scalings associated with a divergence of elastic constants. A normal mode analysis of the nonaffine elastic displacement field allows us to clarify its relation to the zero-frequency mode at the onset of failure and to the cracklike pattern which results from the subsequent relaxation of energy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
authors.forename: Craig
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Maloney
authors.forename: Anaël
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lemaître