Direct observation of percolation in the yielding transition of colloidal glasses

When strained beyond the linear regime, soft colloidal glasses yield to steady-state plastic flow in a way that is similar to the deformation of conventional amorphous solids. Due to the much larger size of the colloidal particles with respect to the atoms comprising an amorphous solid, colloidal gl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2017-02
Main Authors: Ghosh, Antina, Budrikis, Zoe, Vijayakumar Chikkadi, Sellerio, Alessandro, Zapperi, Stefano, Schall, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Colloids
Computer simulation
Deformation
Equilibrium flow
Fractal geometry
Fractals
Percolation theory
Plastic flow
Strain
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Summary:When strained beyond the linear regime, soft colloidal glasses yield to steady-state plastic flow in a way that is similar to the deformation of conventional amorphous solids. Due to the much larger size of the colloidal particles with respect to the atoms comprising an amorphous solid, colloidal glasses allow to obtain microscopic insight into the nature of the yielding transition, as we illustrate here combining experiments, atomistic simulations, and mesoscopic modeling. Our results unanimously show growing clusters of non-affine deformation percolating at yielding. In agreement with percolation theory, the spanning cluster is fractal with a fractal dimension d_f~2, and the correlation length diverges upon approaching the critical yield strain. These results indicate that percolation of highly non-affine particles is the hallmark of the yielding transition in disordered glassy systems.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1702.03225