Molecular-dynamics study of elasticity and failure of ideal solids

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Abstract
Results are presented from molecular-dynamics simulations of ideal solids under conditions of constant temperature, pressure, and uniaxial tensile force. We show that the system remains in metastable equilibrium all the way up to a critical value of the applied stress or force, at which point it fails irreversibly via the nucleation of small-scale defects. The critical load (failure strength) is found to decrease strongly with temperature.