Challenges in the rheology of glasses

TL;DR

This paper reviews key challenges in understanding the rheology of glasses, including flow behavior, yielding phenomena, and their connections to phase transitions and memory effects in materials.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of theoretical challenges in glass rheology, highlighting areas like shear flow, yielding, and related phase transitions.

Findings

Flow curves relate to glass and jamming transitions

Ductile versus brittle yielding behaviors are distinguished

Connections to memory formation and reversible-irreversible transitions are discussed

Abstract

In this contribution to the proceedings of the 29th Solvay Conference on Physics I will give an overview of some key challenges in our theoretical understanding of the rheology of glasses, focussing on (i) steady shear flow curves and their relation to the glass and jamming transitions, (ii) ductile versus brittle yielding in shear startup and (iii) yielding under oscillatory shear. I will also briefly discuss connections to the reversible-irreversible and random organization transitions as well as to the broad field of memory formation in materials.