No Arabic abstract
The evolution of porous structure and mechanical properties of binary glasses under tensile loading were examined using molecular dynamics simulations. We consider vitreous systems obtained in the process of phase separation after a rapid isochoric quench of a glass-forming liquid to a temperature below the glass transition. The porous structure in undeformed samples varies from a connected porous network to a random distribution of isolated pores upon increasing average glass density. We find that at small strain, the elastic modulus follows a power-law dependence on the average glass density and the pore size distribution remains nearly the same as in quiescent samples. Upon further loading, the pores become significantly deformed and coalesce into larger voids that leads to formation of system-spanning empty regions associated with breaking of the material.
The role of porous structure and glass density in response to compressive deformation of amorphous materials is investigated via molecular dynamics simulations. The disordered, porous structures were prepared by quenching a high-temperature binary mixture below the glass transition into the phase coexistence region. With decreasing average glass density, the pore morphology in quiescent samples varies from a random distribution of compact voids to a porous network embedded in a continuous glass phase. We find that during compressive loading at constant volume, the porous structure is linearly transformed in the elastic regime and the elastic modulus follows a power-law increase as a function of the average glass density. Upon further compression, pores deform significantly and coalesce into large voids leading to formation of domains with nearly homogeneous glass phase, which provides an enhanced resistance to deformation at high strain.
The time evolution of the pore size distributions and mechanical properties of amorphous solids at constant pressure is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. The porous glasses were initially prepared at constant volume conditions via a rapid thermal quench from the liquid state to the glassy region and allowing for simultaneous phase separation and material solidification. We found that at constant pressure and low temperature, the porous network becomes more compact and the glassy systems relocate to progressively lower levels of the potential energy. Although the elastic modulus and the average glass density both increase with the waiting time, their dependence is described by the power-law function with the same exponent. Moreover, the results of numerical simulations demonstrated that under tensile loading at constant pressure, low-density porous samples become significantly deformed and break up into separate domains at high strain, while dense glasses form a nearly homogeneous solid material.
Rigidity regulates the integrity and function of many physical and biological systems. This is the first of two papers on the origin of rigidity, wherein we propose that energetic rigidity, in which all non-trivial deformations raise the energy of a structure, is a more useful notion of rigidity in practice than two more commonly used rigidity tests: Maxwell-Calladine constraint counting (first-order rigidity) and second-order rigidity. We find that constraint counting robustly predicts energetic rigidity only when the system has no states of self stress. When the system has states of self stress, we show that second-order rigidity can imply energetic rigidity in systems that are not considered rigid based on constraint counting, and is even more reliable than shear modulus. We also show that there may be systems for which neither first nor second-order rigidity imply energetic rigidity. The formalism of energetic rigidity unifies our understanding of mechanical stability and also suggests new avenues for material design.
We image local structural rearrangements in soft colloidal glasses under small periodic perturbations induced by thermal cycling. Local structural entropy $S_{2}$ positively correlates with observed rearrangements in colloidal glasses. The high $S_{2}$ values of the rearranging clusters in glasses indicate that fragile regions in glasses are structurally less correlated, similar to structural defects in crystalline solids. Slow-evolving high $S_{2}$ spots are capable of predicting local rearrangements long before the relaxations occur, while fluctuation-created high $S_{2}$ spots best correlate with local deformations right before the rearrangement events. Local free volumes are also found to correlate with particle rearrangements at extreme values, although the ability to identify relaxation sites is substantially lower than $S_{2}$. Our experiments provide an efficient structural identifier for the fragile regions in glasses, and highlight the important role of structural correlations in the physics of glasses.
We numerically study the evolution of the vibrational density of states $D(omega)$ of zero-temperature glasses when their kinetic stability is varied over an extremely broad range, ranging from poorly annealed glasses obtained by instantaneous quenches from above the onset temperature, to ultrastable glasses obtained by quenching systems thermalised below the experimental glass temperature. The low-frequency part of the density of states splits between extended and quasi-localized modes. Extended modes exhibit a boson peak crossing over to Debye behaviour ($D(omega) sim omega^2$) at low-frequency, with a strong correlation between the two regimes. Quasi-localized modes instead obey $D(omega) sim omega^4$, irrespective of the glass stability. However, the prefactor of this quartic law becomes smaller in more stable glasses, and the corresponding modes become more localized and sparser. Our work is the first numerical observation of quasi-localized modes in a regime relevant to experiments, and it establishes a direct connection between glass stability and soft vibrational motion in amorphous solids.