The Advantage of A Structural Channel in the Dynamical Response of Elastoplastic Models

As it pertains to failure in mechanically driven crystalline solids, the sites that undergo the bulk of rearrangement are easily identifiable as defects. However, in disordered systems such as glasses, the sites that are likely to rearrange, termed soft spots, are much more difficult to predict and involve rich and complex avalanche dynamics. Beyond being able to better predict avalanches, improving our understanding of these dynamics will also aid in designing better materials. While simplified elastoplastic models have been successful in furthering our understanding of avalanches, it has been shown that they do not display the same spatial correlations as sheared granular solids. Because predicting soft spots from the structure of the material has been widely successful, the Structuro-Elasto-Plasticity Model (StEP) was created to include a separate structural channel for the likelihood of cells to rearrange. We demonstrate the advantage of this elastoplastic model, not only regarding the rearrangement statistics, but the avalanche dynamics as well.