Related papers: Attractive and repulsive cracks in a heterogeneous…
We study the interaction between two cracks propagating quasistatically during the tearing of a thin brittle sheet. We show that the cracks attract each other following a path described by a power law resulting from the competition between…
While cracks in isotropic homogeneous materials propagate straight, perpendicularly to the tensile axis, cracks in natural and synthetic composites deflect from a straight path, often increasing the toughness of the material. Here we…
We study the nucleation and development of crack patterns in thin composite fibers under tension in this work. A fiber comprises an elastic core and an outer layer of a weaker brittle material. In recent tensile experiments on such…
We investigate the origins of the widely-observed "en passant" crack pattern which forms through interactions between two approaching cracks. A rectangular elastic plate is notched on each long side and then subjected to quasistatic…
Slow crack growth in a model of homogenous brittle elastic material is described as a thermal activation process where stress fluctuations allow to overcome a breaking threshold through a series of irreversible steps. We study the case of a…
The problem of predicting the growth of a system of cracks, each crack influencing the growth of the others, arises in multiple fields. We develop an analytical framework toward this aim, which we apply to the `En-Passant' family of crack…
While we fundamentally understand the dynamics of 'simple' cracks propagating in brittle solids within perfect (homogeneous) materials, we do not understand how paths of moving cracks are determined. We experimentally study strongly…
The pattern development of multiple cracks in extremely anisotropic solids such as bilayer or multilayer two-dimensional (2D) crystals contains rich physics, which, however, remains largely unexplored. We studied crack interaction across…
Superficial (two dimensional) crack patterns appear when a thin layer of material elastically attached to a substrate contracts. We study numerically the maturation process undergone by these crack patterns when they are allowed to adapt in…
Using an elastostatic description of crack growth based on the Griffith criterion and the principle of local symmetry, we present a stochastic model describing the propagation of a crack tip in a 2D heterogeneous brittle material. The model…
Predicting the growth of large cracks in brittle materials is a fundamental unresolved problem in fracture mechanics. Under out-of-plane shear loading, an initially planar crack may fragment into multiple cracks, forming an echelon crack…
When cracks form in a thin contracting layer, they sequentially break the layer into smaller and smaller pieces. A rectilinear crack pattern encodes information about the order of crack formation, as later cracks tend to intersect with…
The paper addresses the problem of a Mode III interfacial crack advancing quasi-statically in a heterogeneous composite material, that is a two-phase material containing elastic inclusions, both soft and stiff, and defects, such as…
We study the stability and roughness of propagating cracks in heterogeneous brittle two-dimensional elastic materials. We begin by deriving an equation of motion describing the dynamics of such a crack in the framework of Linear Elastic…
Crack advance from short or long pre-cracks is predicted by the progressive failure of a cohesive zone in a strain gradient, elasto-plastic solid. The presence of strain gradients leads to the existence of an elastic zone at the tip of a…
In viscoelastic materials, individually short-lived bonds collectively result in a mechanical resistance which is long-lived but finite, as ultimately cracks appear. Here we provide a microscopic mechanism by which cracks emerge from the…
Attractive colloids display two distinct amorphous solid phases: the attractive glass, due to particle bonding, and the repulsive glass, due to the hard core repulsion. By means of a microscopic mean field approach, we analyze their…
Cohesive granular materials, like wet sand, retain their shape before yielding under stress. This solid-like behavior is associated with elasticity. As the loading increases, the material typically flows. However, cohesive materials can…
Understanding the role played by the microstructure of materials on their macroscopic failure properties is an important challenge in solid mechanics. Indeed, when a crack propagates at a heterogeneous brittle interface, the front is…
The phenomenon of arrest of an unstably-growing crack due to a curved weak interface is investigated. The weak interface can produce the deviation of the crack path, trapping the crack at the interface, leading to stable crack growth for…