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Fracture propagation is highly sensitive to the conditions at the crack tip. In heterogeneous materials, microscale obstacles can cause propagation instabilities. Macroscopic heterogeneities modify the stress field over scales larger than…
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…
Fracture of materials with rate-dependent mechanical behaviour, e.g. polymers, is a highly complex process. For an adequate modelling, the coupling between rate-dependent stiffness, dissipative mechanisms present in the bulk material and…
This article presents a novel, robust and efficient framework for fatigue crack-propagation that combines the principles of Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) with phase-field fracture (PFF). Contrary to cycle-by-cycle PFF approaches,…
We studied the low speed fracture regime (0.1mm/s - 1nm/s) in different glassy materials (soda-lime glass, glass-ceramics) with variable but controlled length scale of heterogeneity. The chosen mechanical system enabled us to work in pure…
While crack nucleation and propagation in the brittle or quasi-brittle regime can be predicted via variational or material-force-based phase field fracture models, these models often assume that the underlying elastic response of the…
This paper deals with the theoretical and numerical analysis of dynamic fracture of dissimilar chain consisting of masses lined by springs. Such a structure exhibits quite different dynamic properties in comparison with a symmetrical…
In this contribution, a variational diffuse modeling framework for cracks in heterogeneous media is presented. A static order parameter smoothly bridges the discontinuity at material interfaces, while an evolving phase-field captures the…
The relevant parameters at the microstructure scale that govern the macroscopic toughness of disordered brittle materials are investigated theoretically. We focus on planar crack propagation and describe the front evolution as the…
The theory of mechanical response and stress transmission in disordered, jammed solids poses several open questions of how non-periodic networks -- apparently indistinguishable from a snapshot of a fluid -- sustain shear. We present a…
When branching is suppressed, rapid cracks undergo a dynamic instability from a straight to an oscillatory path at a critical velocity $v_c$. In a systematic experimental study using a wide range of different brittle materials, we first…
We employ a recently developed model that allows the study of two-dimensional brittle crack propagation under fixed grip boundary conditions. The crack development highlights the importance of voids which appear ahead of the crack as…
Plastic deformation of crystals is a physical phenomenon, which has immensely driven the development of human civilisation since the onset of the Chalcolithic period. This process is primarily governed by the motion of line defects, called…
Recent theoretical and computational progress has led to unprecedented understanding of symmetry-breaking instabilities in 2D dynamic fracture. At the heart of this progress resides the identification of two intrinsic, near crack tip length…
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…
The propagation of a 3D crack in an heterogeneous material is studied using a phase field model. It is shown that in the case of randomly distributed inclusions of soft material in a matrix, the nature of the distribution has little effect…
A new category of front propagation problems is proposed in which a spreading instability evolves through a singular configuration before saturating. We examine the nature of this front for the viscous Rayleigh instability of a column of…
Dynamic rupture propagation along an interface between two different elastic solids under shear dominated loading is studied numerically by a 2-D lattice particle model (LPM). The configuration of the lattice particle model consists of two…
Crack propagation is studied numerically using a continuum phase-field approach to mode III brittle fracture. The results shed light on the physics that controls the speed of accelerating cracks and the characteristic branching instability…
This paper is devoted to the mechanics of fractal materials. A continuum framework accounting for the topological and metric properties of fractal domains in heterogeneous media is developed. The kinematics of deformations is elucidated and…