Eur. Phys. J. E (2004) 15: 371-381
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2004-10054-8

Elastic consequences of a single plastic event: A step towards the microscopic modeling of the flow of yield stress fluids

¹ Laboratoire de Physico-Chimie Théorique, UMR CNRS 7083, ESPCI, 10 rue Vauquelin, F-75005, Paris, France
² Laboratoire de Physico-Chimie Macromoléculaire, UMR CNRS 7615, ESPCI, 10 rue Vauquelin, F-75005, Paris, France
³ Laboratoire PMCN, UMR CNRS 5586, Université Lyon I, 43 Bd du 11 Novembre 1918, 69622, Villeurbanne Cedex, France

^* e-mail: armand.ajdari@espci.fr

Received: 16 January 2004
Accepted: 29 September 2004
Published online: 25 November 2004

Abstract

With the eventual aim of describing flowing elasto-plastic materials, we focus here on the elementary process of such a flow, a plastic event, and compute the long-range perturbation it elastically induces in a medium submitted to a global shear strain. We characterize the effect of a nearby wall on this perturbation, and quantify the importance of finite-size effects. Although most of our explicit formulae refer to 2D situations, our statements hold for 3D situations as well.