Predicting Plasticity in 3D Model Glasses Using the Local Yield Stress Method

The Local Yield Stress (LYS) method was developed to probe local regions and quantify their susceptibilities to plasticity by measuring the incremental stress required to trigger a local rearrangement (). This method identifies shear transformation zones in amorphous materials, which play a role analogous to dislocations in crystalline materials. We apply the LYS method to 3D Kob-Anderson glasses each with one million atoms in a ~ simulation box. We limit ourselves to a single probing perfectly aligned with the loading on the boundary. Correlations between the local yield stresses and the plastic events are observed to persist up to ~1/3 of the yielding strain at the optimal probing region size, a radius of (600-700 atoms). From a preliminary sampling on the local yield surface at the location of the 1^st plastic event, we find that the local yield surface is highly anisotropic, and the most susceptible local rearrangement doesn’t necessary align perfectly with the applied loading on boundary. This implies that the correlations may be improved if a complete local yield surface were to be sampled at each probing site.