We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force (AFM) microscopy techniques we tracked in real-time the crack tip propagation at the nanometer scale on a wide velocity range (1 mm/s and 0.1 nm/s and below). The influence of the heterogeneities on this velocity is presented and discussed. Our experiments revealed also -for the first time- that the crack advance proceeds through nucleation, growth and coalescence of nanometric damage cavities inside the amorphous phase, which generate large velocity fluctuations. The implications of the existence of such a nano-ductile fracture mode in glass are discussed.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0207583,
title = {Fracture of glassy materials as detected by real-time Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) experiments},
author = {F. Celarie and S. Prades and D. Bonamy and A. Dickele and L. Ferrero and E. Bouchaud and C. Guillot and C. Marliere},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0207583},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Applied surface Science