Related papers: Crackling dynamics in material failure as the sign…
Stress enhancement in the vicinity of brittle cracks makes the macro-scale failure properties extremely sensitive to the micro-scale material disorder. Therefore: (i) Fracturing systems often display a jerky dynamics, so-called crackling…
We study how the loading rate, specimen geometry and microstructural texture select the dynamics of a crack moving through an heterogeneous elastic material in the quasi-static approximation. We find a transition, fully controlled by two…
Crack growth is the basic mechanism leading to the failure of brittle materials. Engineering addresses this problem within the framework of continuum mechanics, which links deterministically the crack motion to the applied loading. Such an…
The dynamics of a single crack moving through a heterogeneous medium is studied in the quasi-static approximation. Equations of motion for the crack front are formulated and the resulting scaling behaviour analyzed. In a model scalar system…
We show that the intermittent and self-similar fluctuations displayed by a slow crack during the propagation in a heterogeneous medium can be quantitatively described by an extension of a classical statistical model for fracture. The model…
The dynamics of planar crack fronts in heterogeneous media is studied using a recently proposed stochastic equation of motion that takes into account nonlinear effects. The analysis is carried for a moving front in the quasi-static regime…
The failure of materials and interfaces is mediated by cracks, nearly singular dissipative structures that propagate at velocities approaching the speed of sound. Crack initiation and subsequent propagation -- the dynamic process of…
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…
Fracture processes in heterogeneous materials comprise a large number of disordered spatial degrees of freedom, representing the dynamical state of a sample over the entire domain of interest. This complexity is usually modeled directly,…
The local and global dynamics of a sheared granular medium are studied in a model experiment as a function of several macroscopic parameters. We observe that by changing the shear rate or the loading stiffness, the system crackles, with…
Statistics and thermally activated dynamics of crack nucleation and propagation in a two-dimensional heterogeneous material containing quenched randomly distributed defects are studied theoretically. Using the generalized Griffith criterion…
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,…
Cracks in soft materials exhibit diverse dynamic patterns, involving straight, oscillation, branching, and supershear fracture. Here, we successfully reproduce these crack morphologies in a two-dimensional pre-strained fracture scenario and…
The dynamics of planar crack fronts in hetergeneous media near the critical load for onset of crack motion are investigated both analytically and by numerical simulations. Elasticity of the solid leads to long range stress transfer along…
The elastic coupling between plastic events is generally invoked to interpret plastic properties and failure of amorphous soft glassy materials. We report an experiment where the emergence of a self-organized plastic flow is observed well…
Slow dynamic nonlinearity is widely observed in brittle materials with complex heterogeneous or cracked microstructures. It is seen in rocks, concrete and cracked glass blocks. Unconsolidated structures show the behavior as well: aggregates…
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…
We investigate the shrinkage induced breakup of thin layers of heterogeneous materials attached to a substrate, a ubiquitous natural phenomenon with a wide range of potential applications. Focusing on the evolution of the fragment ensemble,…
The way granular materials response to an applied shear stress is of the utmost relevance to both human activities and natural environment. One of the their most intriguing and less understood behavior, is the stick-instability, whose most…
We use computer simulations to study the microscopic dynamics of an athermal assembly of soft particles near the fluid-to-solid, jamming transition. Borrowing tools developed to study dynamic heterogeneity near glass transitions, we…