The rheology of solid glass

As the glass transition is approached from the high temperature side, viewed as a liquid, the properties of the ever more viscous supercooled liquid are continuous functions of temperature and pressure. The point at which we decide to classify the fluid as a solid is therefore subjective. This subjective decision does, however, have discontinuous consequences for how we determine the rheological properties of the glass. We apply the recently discovered relaxation theorem to the time independent, nondissipative, nonergodic glassy state to derive an expression for the phase space distribution of an ensemble of glass samples. This distribution is then used to construct a time dependent linear response theory for aged glassy solids. The theory is verified using molecular dynamics simulations of oscillatory shear for a realistic model glass former with excellent agreement being obtained between the response theory calculations and direct nonequilibrium molecular dynamics calculations. Our numerical results confirm that unlike all the fluid states, including supercooled liquids, a solid glass in common with crystalline states has a nonzero value for the zero frequency shear modulus. Of all the states of matter, a supercooled fluid approaching the glass transition has the highest value for the limiting zero frequency shear viscosity. Finally, solid glasses like dilute gases and crystals have a positive temperature coefficient for the shear viscosity whereas supercooled and normal liquids have a negative temperature coefficient. © 2010 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3418442