Nonaffine rearrangements of atoms in deformed and quiescent binary glasses

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to analyze how periodic shear deformation affects atomic displacements in binary glasses, revealing clustering and long-range correlations even without deformation.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of periodic shear on nonaffine atomic displacements and their spatial organization in amorphous solids, highlighting effects at different strain amplitudes.

Findings

Atoms undergo repetitive nonaffine displacements under shear.

Large displacement particles form compact clusters.

Long-range correlations exist even without shear due to thermal fluctuations.

Abstract

The influence of periodic shear deformation on nonaffine atomic displacements in an amorphous solid is examined via molecular dynamics simulations. We study the three-dimensional Kob-Andersen binary mixture model at a finite temperature. It is found that when the material is periodically strained, most of the atoms undergo repetitive nonaffine displacements with amplitudes that are broadly distributed. We show that particles with large amplitudes of nonaffine displacements are organized into compact clusters. With increasing strain amplitude, spatial correlations of nonaffine displacements become increasingly long-ranged, although they remain present even in a quiescent system due to thermal fluctuations.