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Experiments on quasistatic crack propagation in gelatin hydrogels reveal a new branching instability triggered by wetting the tip opening with a drop of aqueous solvent less viscous than the bulk one. We show that the emergence of unstable…
The resistance to fracture of reversible biopolymer hydrogels is an important control factor of the cutting/slicing and eating characteristics of food gels. It is also critical for their utilization in tissue engineering, for which…
Fractures are a critical process in how materials wear, weaken, and fail whose unpredictable behavior can have dire consequences. While the behavior of smooth cracks in ideal materials is well understood, it is assumed that for real,…
Hydrogels have had a profound impact in the fields of tissue engineering, drug delivery, and materials science as a whole. Due to the network architecture of these materials, imbibement with water often results in uniform swelling and…
We argue that nucleation of brittle cracks in initially flawless soft elastic solids is preceded by a nonlinear elastic instability, which cannot be captured without accounting for geometrical precise description of finite elastic…
Mixed mode (I+III) loading induces segmented crack front \'echelon structures connected by steps. We study this instability in a highly deformable, strain-hardening material. We find that \'echelons develop beyond a finite, size-independent…
A liquid droplet resting on a soft gel substrate can deform that substrate to the point of material failure, whereby fractures develop on the gel surface that propagate outwards from the contact-line in a starburst pattern. In this paper,…
When brittle hydrogels fail, several mechanisms conspire to alter the state of stress near the tip of a crack, and it is challenging to identify which mechanism is dominant. In the fracture of brittle solids, a sufficient far-field stress…
Fracture of highly stretched materials challenges our view of how things break. We directly visualize rupture of tough double-network (DN) gels at >50\% strain. During fracture, crack tip shapes obey a $x\sim y^{1.6}$ power-law, in contrast…
Cracks, the major vehicle for material failure, tend to accelerate to high velocities in brittle materials. In three-dimensions, cracks generically undergo a micro-branching instability at about 40% of their sonic limiting velocity. Recent…
Adhesion hysteresis can be caused by elastic instabilities that are triggered by surface roughness or chemical heterogeneity. However, the role of these instabilities in adhesion hysteresis remains poorly understood because we lack…
Highly-deformable materials, from synthetic hydrogels to biological tissues, are becoming increasingly important from both fundamental and practical perspectives. Their mechanical behaviors, in particular the dynamics of crack propagation…
In fracture mechanics, polyacrylamide hydrogels have been widely used as a model material for experiments, benefited from its optical transparency, fracture brittleness, and low Rayleigh wave velocity. To describe the brittle fracture in…
We present an extensive experimental study of mode-I, steady, slow crack dynamics in gelatin gels. Taking advantage of the sensitivity of the elastic stiffness to gel composition and history we confirm and extend the model for fracture of…
We propose a theoretical model for branching instabilities in 2-dimensional fracture, offering predictions for when crack branching occurs, how multiple cracks develop, and what is the geometry of multiple branches. The model is based on…
We report on rate-dependent fracture energy measurements over three decades of steady crack velocities in alginate and gelatin hydrogels. We evidence that, irrespective of gel thermo-reversibility, thermally activated "unzipping" of the…
The dynamic fragmentation of residually stressed solids involves a complex interplay between stored elastic energy, stress wave propagation, and crack instabilities. In this work, we investigate the fracture mechanics of chemically…
The focus of the article is on fracture criteria for dynamic crack propagation in elastic materials with microstructures. Steady-state propagation of a Mode III semi-infinite crack subject to loading applied on the crack surfaces is…
Mode-I fracture exhibits microbranching in the high velocity regime where the simple straight crack is unstable. For velocities below the instability, classic modeling using linear elasticity is valid. However, showing the existence of the…
The nucleation and propagation of hydrofractures by injection of over pressured fluids in an elastic and isotropic medium are studied experimentally. Non-Newtonian fluids are injected inside a gelatine whose mechanical properties are…