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The response of amorphous materials to variations in mechanical loading has significant implications in several fields, including mechanical and chemical engineering, materials science, geophysics, and condensed matter physics. It has recently been discovered that amorphous and granular materials subjected to external cyclic shear exhibit periodic behavior for small strain amplitudes and non-repeating movements for larger amplitudes. This change in system dynamics, referred to as the irreversibility transition, is linked to the yield transition in amorphous materials, but the connection is still not completely understood. During my Ph.D. studies, I focused on three key projects with the goal of constructing models to represent different aspects of the response of amorphous solids to external shear strain. Through the use of simulation algorithms and molecular dynamics simulation data, I demonstrated how the confinement of dynamics to a small portion of the energy landscape and interactions between plastic events are responsible for both periodic and irreversible dynamics. These results have important implications for our understanding and modeling of plasticity in amorphous solids.
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