Fig. 2.

(A) Deformation at ${\epsilon }_{\text{applied}}^{yy}=-4\%$ of a sample with eight phase-inducing defects arranged to induce nucleation of phase+. (B and C) Deformation at (B) ${\epsilon }_{\text{applied}}^{yy}=-4\%$ and (C) ${\epsilon }_{\text{applied}}^{yy}=-6\%$ of a sample with eight phase-inducing defects arranged to induce nucleation of phase+ near the bottom boundary and phase- near the top one. Experimental and numerical snapshots are shown at Top and Bottom, respectively. The color corresponds to the rotation of the squares. Zoom-ins of the defects are also shown. (D) Comparison between analytically predicted (solid lines) and experimentally extracted (circles) evolution of the squares’ rotation $\theta$ across the sample for different values of applied strain. (E) Analytically predicted evolution of the total energy of the structure as a function of domain wall position $y_0$ for different values of applied strain. (F) Evolution of the domain wall position $y_0$ as a function of the applied strain ${\epsilon }_{\text{applied}}^{yy}$ as predicted by theory (solid line) and numerical simulations (dashed line) and extracted from experiments (triangles). (G) Evolution of the energy barrier $\mathrm{\Delta }E$ as a function of applied strain ${\epsilon }_{\text{applied}}^{yy}$.