Finite-size study of the athermal quasistatic yielding transition in structural glasses

TL;DR

This study investigates how the yielding transition in structural glasses varies with system size and disorder, revealing a crossover from gradual to abrupt failure and drawing analogies to brittle fracture phenomena.

Contribution

It provides the first finite-size analysis of the athermal quasistatic yielding transition across different disorder levels in structural glasses.

Findings

Crossover from gradual to discontinuous stress drops with increasing system size.

Crossover size increases with structural disorder.

Analogies drawn between yielding in glasses and brittle fracture models.

Abstract

We present a finite-size study of the athermal quasistatic yielding transition in structural glasses featuring a wide range of mechanical disorder. We find a crossover from gradual yielding in small systems, to a macroscopic discontinuous stress drop as the system size is increased. The crossover size grows significantly as the sample's structural disorder approaches the maximal value that a glass can attain. Our results suggest an analogy between the nature of the athermal quasistatic yielding transition in structural glasses and brittle fracture of fuse models and elastic networks. We discuss our results in the context of recent claims in the literature.