title: Mechanical properties and plasticity of a model glass loaded under stress control.
abstract: Much of the progress achieved in understanding plasticity and failure in amorphous solids had been achieved using experiments and simulations in which the materials were loaded using strain control. There is paucity of results under stress control. Here we present a method that was carefully geared to allow loading under stress control either at T=0 or at any other temperature, using Monte Carlo techniques. The method is applied to a model-perfect crystalline solid, to a crystalline solid contaminated with topological defects, and to a generic glass. The highest yield stress belongs to the crystal, the lowest to the crystal with a few defects, with the glass in between. Although the glass is more disordered than the crystal with a few defects, it yields stress much higher than that of the latter. We explain this fact by considering the actual microscopic interactions that are typical of glass-forming materials, pointing out the reasons for the higher cohesive nature of the glass. The main conclusion of this paper is that the instabilities encountered in stress-control condition are the identical saddle-node bifurcation seen in strain control. Accordingly one can use the latter condition to infer the former. Finally we discuss temperature effects and comment on the time needed to see a stress-controlled material failure.
authors.affiliation: Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel and Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, 03680 Kiev, Ukraine.
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Dailidonis
authors.affiliation: Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Valery
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ilyin
authors.affiliation: Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Pankaj
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mishra
authors.affiliation: Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Itamar
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Procaccia