Consequences of Disorder on the Stability of Amorphous Solids

TL;DR

This paper uses precise numerical simulations to compare the mechanical stability and yield behavior of crystalline and amorphous solids, revealing distinct temperature-dependent scaling laws.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how disorder affects the stability and yield strain scaling laws in amorphous versus crystalline solids.

Findings

Different temperature scaling laws for yield strain: T^{1/3} for crystals, T^{2/3} for amorphous solids.

Distinction between shear modulus vanishing and plastic instability onset.

Quantitative characterization of stability differences due to disorder.

Abstract

Highly acurate numerical simulations are employed to highlight the subtle but important differences in the mechanical stability of perfect crystalline solids versus amorphous solids. We stress the difference between strain values at which the shear modulus vanishes and strain values at which a plastic instability insues. The temperature dependence of the yield strain is computed for the two types of solids, showing different scaling laws: $\gamma_{_{Y}}\simeq \gamma_{_{Y}}^{0}-C_1 T^{1/3}$ for crystals versus $\gamma_{_{Y}}\simeq \gamma_{_{Y}}^{0}- C_2 T^{2/3}$ for amorphous solids.