Reversible plasticity in amorphous materials

Abstract

A fundamental assumption in our understanding of material rheology is that when microscopic deformations are reversible, the material responds elastically to external loads. Plasticity, i.e. dissipative and irreversible macroscopic changes in a material, is assumed to be the consequence of irreversible microscopic events. Here we show direct evidence for reversible plastic events at the microscopic scale in both experiments and simulations of two-dimensional foam. In the simulations, we demonstrate a link between reversible plastic rearrangement events and pathways in the potential energy landscape of the system. These findings represent a fundamental change in our understanding of materials--microscopic reversibility does not necessarily imply elasticity.

Revised paper

References in corpus (2)

• Statistics of Bubble Rearrangements in a Slowly Sheared Two-dimensional Foam
• Statistics of microscopic yielding in sheared aqueous foams

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Granular Character of Particle Rafts
• Far-from-equilibrium state in a weakly dissipative model
• Comparison of low amplitude oscillatory shear in experimental and computational studies of model foams
• Fronts Propagation at the Onset of Plastic Yielding
• Discrete rearranging disordered patterns, part II: 2D plasticity, elasticity and flow of a foam