Mechanical annealing model of damage in arrays of nanopillars

The mechanical damage accumulation occurring in an array of axially loaded nanopillars is studied within the stochastic approach. To each nanopillar, an initial strength--threshold is assigned which is drawn from the Weibull probability distribution. Under the influence of load exceeding the strength-threshold the pillar height is reduced. Then the reduced pillar gets new higher strength-threshold and its load is transferred to other working pillars. We analyse slip loads causing the system height reductions and avalanches of the pillar height reductions.