  Crystalline plasticity is strongly interlinked with dislocation mechanics and
nowadays is relatively well understood. Concepts and physical models of plastic
deformation in amorphous materials on the other hand - where the concept of
linear lattice defects is not applicable - still are lagging behind. We
introduce an eigenstrain-based finite element lattice model for simulations of
shear band formation and strain avalanches. Our model allows us to study the
influence of surfaces and finite size effects on the statistics of avalanches.
We find that even with relatively complex loading conditions and open boundary
conditions, critical exponents describing avalanche statistics are unchanged,
which validates the use of simpler scalar lattice-based models to study these
phenomena.
