Mechanical Failure of a Small and Confined Solid

Debasish Chaudhuri; Surajit Sengupta

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arXiv · cond-mat/0508513

Mechanical Failure of a Small and Confined Solid

Debasish Chaudhuri·Surajit Sengupta

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Abstract

Starting from a commensurate triangular thin solid strip, confined within two hard structureless walls, a stretch along its length introduces a rectangular distortion. Beyond a critical strain the solid fails through nucleation of "smectic"-like bands. We show using computer simulations and simple density functional based arguments, how a solid-smectic transition mediates the failure. Further, we show that the critical strain introducing failure is {\em inversely} proportional to the channel width i.e. thinner strips are stronger!

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Debasish Chaudhuri, Surajit Sengupta. 2005-08-22. Mechanical Failure of a Small and Confined Solid. https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0508513

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