Eyring theory for plasticity in amorphous polymers violates Curie's principle

In 1936, Eyring introduced a model which describes plastic flow as an activated process which still forms the bedrock

of virtually all the works regarding plasticity of glassy polymers. We argue here that under no circumstances can the Eyring model

be correct as it violates Curie's principle which is a basic physical requirements of statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics.

An alternative model was proposed by Long et al (2018) to describe the acceleration of the dynamics by an applied stress,

in which the elastic energy stored at the length scale of dynamical heterogeneities L = 3 - 5 nm reduces the free energy barrier for relaxation. While this model is incompatible with the classical Eyring model, it fully complies with Curie's principle.

This model opens the way to set glassy polymers plasticity into the realm of out-of-equilibrium statistical physics, which we argue is the appropriate framework for considering the physics of glass transition from the physics viewpoint.