An Einstein Model of Brittle Crack Propagation
Materials Science
2009-10-28 v1
Abstract
We propose a minimal nonlinear model of brittle crack propagation by considering only the motion of the crack-tip atom. The model captures many essential features of steady-state crack velocity and is in excellent quantitative agreement with many-body dynamical simulations. The model exhibits lattice-trapping. For loads just above this, the crack velocity rises sharply, reaching a limiting value well below that predicted by elastic continuum theory. We trace the origin of the low limiting velocity to the anharmonicity of the potential well experienced by the crack-tip atom.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9611107,
title = {An Einstein Model of Brittle Crack Propagation},
author = {Brad Lee Holian and Raphael Blumenfeld and Peter Gumbsch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9611107},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
To appear in Physical Review Letters, 9 pages, self-contained TeX file, email to [email protected] or [email protected] for two postscript figures