Dynamic Failure in Amorphous Solids via a Cavitation Instability

Abstract

The understanding of dynamic failure in amorphous materials via the propagation of free boundaries like cracks and voids must go beyond elasticity theory, since plasticity intervenes in a crucial and poorly understood manner near the moving free boundary. In this Letter we focus on failure via a cavitation instability in a radially-symmetric stressed material, set up the free boundary dynamics taking both elasticity and visco-plasticity into account, using the recently proposed athermal Shear Transformation Zone theory. We demonstrate the existence (in amorphous systems) of fast cavitation modes accompanied by extensive plastic deformations and discuss the revealed physics.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Dynamic instabilities of fracture under biaxial strain using a phase field model
• Dissipative Visco-plastic Deformation in Dynamic Fracture: Tip Blunting and Velocity Selection
• Free-Boundary Dynamics in Elasto-plastic Amorphous Solids: The Circular Hole Problem

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Stability of an Expanding Circular Cavity and the Failure of Amorphous Solids
• Finite-time Singularities in Surface-Diffusion Instabilities are Cured by Plasticity
• Fronts Propagation at the Onset of Plastic Yielding