Atomistic theory of the shear band direction in amorphous solids

Abstract: One of the major theoretical riddles in shear banding instabilities is the angle that the shear band chooses spontaneously with respect to the principal stress axis. Here we employ our recent atomistic theory to compute analytically the angle in terms of the characteristics of the Eshelby inclusion that models faithfully the eigenfunction of the Hessian matrix that goes soft at the plastic instability. We show that loading protocols that do not conserve volume result in shear bands at angles different from 45$^o$ to the strain axis; only when the external strains preserve volume like in pure shear, the shear bands align precisely at 45$^o$ to the strain axis. We compute an analytic formula for the angle of the shear band in terms of the characteristics of the loading protocol; quantitative agreement with computer simulations is demonstrated.