Data and code from: Yielding in dense active matter

This dataset contains Python scripts and data files to support an investigation of the yielding transition in dense active matter in the limit of slow driving and large persistence times, across a wide range of material preparations. Under shear, materials prepared to be very low energy or ‘ultrastable’ are brittle, and well-described by elastoplastic constitutive laws. We show that, under random active forcing, however, ultrastable materials are always ductile, as shown by plotting the stress-strain curve for both active and passive systems. We develop a modified elastoplastic model that captures and explains these observations, where the key parameter is the correlation length of the input active driving field. We also observe large parameter regimes where the plastic flow is surprisingly well-predicted by the input active driving field and not highly dependent on the structural disorder, suggesting new strategies for control. These are shown by plotting the average stress drops for different driving correlation lengths.