corner
corner
APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 93 » Issue 19
< Previous Article | Next Article >

Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 195501 (2004) [4 pages]

Universal Breakdown of Elasticity at the Onset of Material Failure

Download: PDF (518 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

Craig Maloney1,2 and Anaël Lemaître1,3
1Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA
2Lawrence Livermore National Lab, CMS-MSTD, Livermore, California 94550, USA
3LMDH, Universite Paris VI, UMR 7603, 4 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France

Received 6 May 2004; published 2 November 2004

We show that, in the athermal quasistatic deformation of amorphous materials, the onset of failure is accompanied by universal scalings associated with a divergence of elastic constants. A normal mode analysis of the nonaffine elastic displacement field allows us to clarify its relation to the zero-frequency mode at the onset of failure and to the cracklike pattern which results from the subsequent relaxation of energy.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.195501
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.195501
PACS:
62.20.Dc, 62.20.Fe, 62.25.+g, 72.80.Ng
 
< Previous Article | Next Article >