An Eshelby model for the highly viscous flow

Abstract

The shear flow and the dielectric alpha-process in molecular glass formers is modeled in terms of local structural rearrangements which reverse a strong local shear. Using Eshelby's solution of the corresponding elasticity theory problem (J. D. Eshelby, Proc. Roy. Soc. A241, 376 (1957)), one can calculate the recoverable compliance and estimate the lifetime of the symmetric double-well potential characterizing such a structural rearrangement. A full modeling of the shear relaxation spectra requires an additional parametrization of the barrier density of these structural rearrangements. The dielectric relaxation spectrum can be described as a folding of these relaxations with the Debye process.