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Scaling Theory for Wöhler plots in amorphous solids under cyclic forcing

In mechanical engineering Wöhler plots serve to measure the average number of load cycles before materials break, as a function of the maximal stress in each cycle. Although such plots are prevalent in engineering for more than 150 years, their theoretical understanding is lacking. Recently a scaling theory of Wöhler plots in the context of cyclic bending was offered [1]. Here we elaborate further on cyclic bending and extend the considerations to cyclic tensile loads on an amorphous strip of material; the scaling theory applies to both types of cyclic loading equally well. On the basis of atomistic simulations we conclude that the crucial quantities to focus on are the accumulated damage and the average damage per cycle. The dependence of these quantities on the loading determines the statistics of the number of cycles to failure. Finally we consider the probability distribution functions of the number of cycles to failure and demonstrate that the scaling theory allows prediction of these distributions at one value of the forcing amplitude from measurements and another value.