Configurations of supercooled liquids residing in their local potential minimum (i.e. in their inherent structure, IS) were found to support a non-zero shear stress. This IS stress was attributed to the constraint to the energy minimization imposed by boundary conditions, which keep size and shape of the simulation cell fixed. In this paper we further investigate the influence of these boundary conditions on the IS stress. We investigate its importance for the computation of the low frequency shear modulus of a glass obtaining a consistent picture for the low- and high frequency shear moduli over the full temperature range. Hence, we find that the IS stress corresponds to a non-thermal contribution to the fluctuation term in the Born-Green expression. This leads to an unphysical divergence of the moduli in the low temperature limit if no proper correction for this term is applied. Furthermore, we clarify the IS stress dependence on the system size and put its origin on a more formal basis.
Using extensive non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate a glassforming binary Lennard-Jones mixture under shear. Both supercooled liquids and glasses are considered. Our focus is on the characterization of inhomogeneous flow patterns such as shear bands that appear as a transient response to the external shear. For the supercooled liquids, we analyze the crossover from Newtonian to non-Newtonian behavior with increasing shear rate $\dotγ$. Above a critical shear rate $\dotγ_c$ where a non-Newtonian response sets in, the transient dynamics are associated with the occurren…
We propose a microscopic picture for understanding the nonlinear rheology of supercooled liquids with soft-repulsive potentials. Based on Brownian dynamics simulations of supercooled charge-stabilized colloidal suspensions, our analysis shows that the shear thinning of viscosity (eta) at large enough shear rates (sr), expressed as eta~sr^(-lambda), originates from the evolution of the localized elastic region (LER). An LER is a transient region composed of the first several coordination shells of a reference particle. In response to the external shear, particles within LER undergo nearly affin…
The viscosity of supercooled water has been a subject of intense study, in particular with respect to its temperature dependence. Much less is known, however, about the influence of dynamical effects on the viscosity in its supercooled state. Here we address this issue for the first time, using molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the shear-rate dependence of the viscosity of supercooled water as described by the TIP4P/Ice model. We show the existence of a distinct cross-over from Newtonian to non-Newtonian behavior characterized by a power-law shear-thinning regime. The viscosity red…
Molecular Dynamics (MD) computer simulations of a polydisperse soft-sphere model under shear are presented. Starting point for these simulations are deeply supercooled samples far below the critical temperature, $T_c$, of mode coupling theory. These samples are fully equilibrated with the aid of the swap Monte Carlo technique. For states below $T_c$, we identify a life time $τ_{\rm lt}$ that measures the time scale on which the system can be considered as an amorphous solid. The temperature dependence of $τ_{\rm lt}$ can be well described by an Arrhenius law. The existence of transient amorpho…
Passive microrheology typically deduces shear elastic loss and storage moduli from displacement time series or mean-squared displacement (MSD) of thermally fluctuating probe particles in equilibrium materials. Common data analysis methods use either Kramers-Kronig (KK) transformations or functional fitting to calculate frequency-dependent loss and storage moduli. We propose a new analysis method for passive microrheology that avoids the limitations of both of these approaches. In this method, we determine both real and imaginary components of the complex, frequency-dependent response function …
A new connection between structure and dynamics in glass-forming liquids is presented. We show how the origin of spatially localized excitations, as defined by dynamical facilitation (DF) theory, can be understood from a structure-based framework. This framework is constructed by associating excitation events in DF theory to hopping events between energy minima in the potential energy landscape (PEL). By reducing the PEL to an equal energy well picture and applying a harmonic approximation, we develop a field theory to describe elastic fluctuations about inherent states, which are energy minim…
Translational dynamics of two-dimensional glass forming fluids is strongly influenced by soft, long-wavelength fluctuations first recognized by D. Mermin and H. Wagner. As a result of these fluctuations, characteristic features of glassy dynamics, such as plateaus in the mean squared displacement and the self-intermediate scattering function, are absent in two dimensions. In contrast, Mermin-Wagner fluctuations do not influence orientational relaxation and well developed plateaus are observed in orientational correlation functions. It has been suggested that by monitoring translational motion …
Soft particulate gels can reversibly yield when sufficient deformation is applied, and the characteristics of this transition can be enhanced or limited by designing hybrid hydrogel composites. While the microscopic dynamics and macroscopic rheology of these systems have been studied separately in detail, the development of direct connections between the two has been difficult, particularly with regard to the non-linear rheology. To bridge this gap, we perform a series of large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS) numerical measurements on model soft particulate gels at different volume fraction…
Amorphous materials have a rich relaxation spectrum, which is usually described in terms of a hierarchy of relaxation mechanisms. In this work, we investigate the local dynamic modulus spectra in a model glass just above the glass transition temperature by performing a mechanical spectroscopy analysis with molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the spectra, at the local as well as on the global scale, can be well described by the Cole-Davidson formula in the frequency range explored with simulations. Surprisingly, the Cole-Davidson stretching exponent does not change with the size of the…
We present new general relationships among the material properties of an isotropic material kept in homogeneous stress conditions with hydrostatic pressure and plane shear. The derivation is not limited to the proximity of the zero shear-stress and -strain condition, which allows us to identify the relationship between adiabatic and isothermal shear compliances (inverse of the moduli of rigidity) along with new links, among others, between isobaric and isochoric shear thermal expansion coefficients, heat capacities at constant stress and constant shear strain. Such relationships are important …
Here we report the linear viscoelastic properties of amorphous poly(tetramethylene oxide) (PTMO), which is one of the key components in synthesizing segmented polyurethane (PU) elastomers. The temperature and molecular weight dependent viscoelastic behavior is investigated in detail by computing the shear relaxation modulus G(t) and the bulk relaxation modulus K(t), using the Green-Kubo relationship with correlation function. Our results provide new data for PTMO melt from the united atom model and also extend the existing knowledge of viscoelastic properties of polymers in general. The predic…
