Shear-induced phase transition and critical exponents in 3D fiber networks

Abstract

When subject to applied strain, fiber networks exhibit nonlinear elastic stiffening. Recent theory and experiements have shown that this phenomenon is controlled by an underlying mechanical phase transition that is critical in nature. Growing simulation evidence points to non-mean-field behavior for this transition and a hyperscaling relation has been proposed to relate the corresponding critical exponents. Here, we report simulations on two distinct network structures in 3D. By performing finite-size scaling analysis, we test hyperscaling and identify various critical exponents. From the apparent validity of hyperscaling, as well as the non-mean-field exponents we observe, our results suggest that the upper critical dimension for the strain-controlled phase transition is above three, in contrast to the jamming transition that represents another athermal, mechanical phase transition.

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Yielding and plasticity in amorphous solids
• Mechanics of fiber networks under a bulk strain
• Scaling theory of critical strain-stiffening in disordered elastic networks
• Mechanical criticality of fiber networks at a finite temperature
• Effective Medium Theory for Mechanical Phase Transitions of Fiber Networks
• Building rigid networks with prestress and selective pruning
• The strain-stiffening critical exponents in polymer networks and their universality
• Spatial patterning of force centers controls folding pathways of active elastic networks