Finite width of quasistatic shear bands

E. A. JAGLA

PHYSICAL REVIEW E - STATISTICAL PHYSICS, PLASMAS, FLUIDS AND RELATED INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS

American Physical Society

Lugar: New York; Año: 2008 vol. 78 p. 261051 - 261059

1063-651X

I study the average deformation rate of an amorphous material submitted to an external uniform shear strain rate, in the geometry known as the split-bottom configuration. The material is described using a stochastic model of plasticityat a mesoscopic scale.A shear band is observed to start at the split point at the bottom, and widen progressively towards the surface.In a two-dimensional geometry the average statistical properties of the shear band look similar to those of the directed polymer model. In particular, the surface width of the shear band is found to scale with the system height $H$ as$H^alpha $ with $alpha=0.68pm 0.02$. In more realistic three dimensional simulations the exponent changes to$alpha=0.60pm 0.02$  and the bulk profile of the width of the shear band is closer to a quarter of a circle, as it wasobserved to be the case in recent simulations of granular materials.