Limit cycles and mechanical memory effects in mesoscopic elastoplastic models of amorphous solids

The plasticity of glasses and more generally the rheology of complex
fluids shows a rich and complex phenomenology which strongly depends on
their preparation conditions. When subjected to shear disordered
materials show  scale free avalanches or localization of the strain
field in shear bands. When subjected to cyclic loading at a low enough
amplitude, suspensions and amorphous solids can reach limit cycles. Such
a reversible plastic behavior disappears beyond a critical value of the
loading amplitude. We show that these spectacular effects can be
reproduced in the framework of a simple depinning-like elastoplastic
model with quenched disorder. We discuss the effect of glass preparation
on the nature of the irreversibility transition and the properties of
the limit cycles. We finally present recent results about the encoding
and reading of a mechanical memory in amorphous solids.

References :
K. Khirallah, B. Tyukodi, D. Vandembroucq, C.E. Maloney Phys. Rev. Lett.
126, 218005 (2021)
D. Kumar  S. Patinet, C.E. Maloney, I. Regev, D. Vandembroucq, M.
Mungan, J. Chem. Phys. 157, 174504 (2022)