Predicting plastic flow events in athermal shear-strained amorphous solids.

We propose a method to predict the value of the external strain where a generic amorphous solid will fail by a plastic response (i.e., an irreversible deformation), solely on the basis of measurements of the nonlinear elastic moduli. While usually considered fundamentally different, with the elastic properties describing reversible phenomena and plastic failure epitomizing irreversible behavior, we show that the knowledge of some nonlinear elastic moduli is enough to predict where plasticity sets in.