Plastic deformation of a permanently bonded network: stress relaxation by pleats

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a 2D network undergoes plastic deformation through pleats, using a phase diagram approach to understand stress localization and metastability, with implications for experimental observation.

Contribution

It introduces a model coupling to non-affine displacements to explain pleat formation as a first-order transition in a network under strain.

Findings

Pleats form via a first-order transition from homogeneous to heterogeneous phase.

Un-pleated state remains metastable at zero field for small strains.

Predictions made for local stress distributions and thermal effects in experiments.

Abstract

We show that a flat two dimensional network of connected vertices, when stretched, may deform plastically by producing `pleats'; system spanning linear structures with width comparable to the lattice spacing, where the network overlaps on itself. To understand the pleating process, we introduce an external field that couples to local {\em non-affine} displacements, i.e. those displacements of neighbouring vertices that cannot be represented as a local affine strain. We obtain both zero and finite temperature phase diagrams in the strain -- field plane. Pleats occur here as a result of an equilibrium first-order transition from the homogeneous network to a heterogeneous phase where stress is localised within pleats and eliminated elsewhere. We show that in the thermodynamic limit the un-pleated state is always metastable at vanishing field for infinitesimal strain. Plastic deformation of the initially homogeneous network is akin to the decay of a metastable phase via a dynamical transition. We make predictions concerning local stress distributions and thermal effects associated with pleats which may be observable in suitable experimental systems.