Fig. 4: Signatures of the brittle–to-ductile transition.
From: Origins of complexity in the rheology of Soft Earth suspensions
a The Bingham part of the constitutive equation τ⋆−1−Γ plotted against the dimensionless shear rate. The curves shown correspond to the plastic term αΓn in the constitutive equation 2. Colors correspond to ξ values in Fig. 3. Sand-rich suspensions have almost no plastic regime. With increasing clay content ξ, we see the growth of a plastic regime and the emergence of a robust exponent n = 1/2. b Stress–strain curves for suspensions at all values of ξ, where the oscillatory stress τosc is normalized by the steady-state stress after yielding τss, and strain is in units of percent. Inset shows that the stress overshoot systematically decreases as ξ increases; this behavior is characteristic of a brittle to ductile transition (compare to Fig. 1 in ref. 24). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
