Critical yielding rheology: from externally deformed glasses to active systems

Understand

In the last decade many research efforts have been focused on understanding the rheology of disordered materials, and several theoretical predictions have been put forward regarding their yielding behavior.

• Nevertheless, not many experiments nor molecular dynamics simulations were dedicated to testing those theoretical predictions.
• Here we use computer simulations to study the yielding transition under two different loading schemes: standard simple shear dynamics, and self-propelled, dense active systems.
• In the active systems a yielding transition is observed as expected, when the self-propulsion is increased.