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Description
In this seminar I will discuss how flow or failure of a disordered solid start.
This concerns us all, all the time. Everyday examples include taking toothpaste from its container or sliding your (unrolling) chair. Yet, the unpredictability of failure is equally ubiquitous, as electric transformers suddenly malfunction, less than hoped energy is absorbed (in vehicles or armour), or an earthquake suddenly occurs.
I argue that the scale dominant for failure of a disordered solid and frictional interfaces is a mesoscale at which disorder is present. Consequently, weak spots (regions that have a small distance to failure) appear and interact along shear bands. Their nucleation is governed by a steady-state rheology that also emerges at this scale. Modifications of the rheology by an external temperature or internal heating allow the system to leave its relatively predictable steady state. This can lead to creep and fluidisation in soft glasses, novel engineering possibilities of hard glasses, and it amounts to an enigmatic static friction coefficient observed in the shear of interfaces (including shear bands in glasses). Both are surrounded by many questions still as their study requires ideas from physics, mechanics, and material science.
I will focus the last part of my talk on frictional interfaces, for which I will present a microscopic theory for the static friction coefficient.
Organised by
Laboratory for Theoretical and Computational Physics
Host: Dr. Markus Müller
