Related papers: Slow Crack Propagation in Heterogeneous Materials
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 propagation of an interfacial crack front through a weak plane of a transparent Plexiglas block has been studied experimentally. A stable crack in mode I was generated by loading the system by an imposed displacement. The local…
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…
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…
This paper presents a formulation for brittle fracture in 3D elastic solids within the context of configurational mechanics. The local form of the first law of thermodynamics provides a condition for equilibrium of the crack front. The…
A statistical model of fragmentation of aggregates is proposed, based on the stochastic propagation of cracks through the body. The propagation rules are formulated on a lattice and mimic two important features of the process -- a crack…
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…
We present in this paper an approach for computing the homogenized behavior of a medium that is a small random perturbation of a periodic reference material. The random perturbation we consider is, in a sense made precise in our work, a…
This paper investigates the effects of plasticity on the effective fracture toughness. A layered material is considered as a modelling system. An elastic-plastic phase-field model and a surfing boundary condition are used to study how the…
We investigate the process of slow intergranular crack propagation by the finite element method model, and show that branching is induced by partial arresting of crack front owing to the geometrical randomness of grain boundaries. A…
We investigate the fragmentation process of solid materials with crystalline and amorphous phases using the discrete element method. Damage initiates inside spherical samples above the contact zone in a region where the circumferential…
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,…
The damage and fracture of materials are technologically of enormous interest due to their economic and human cost. They cover a wide range of phenomena like e.g. cracking of glass, aging of concrete, the failure of fiber networks in the…
A mathematical continuum limit of the interaction energy of a random particle chain is shown to yield new insight into the effect of microscopic heterogeneities on macroscopic fracture laws in brittle materials. We derive a formula which…
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…
The deformation of rocks is associated with microcracks nucleation and propagation, i.e. damage. The accumulation of damage and its spatial localization lead to the creation of a macroscale discontinuity, so-called "fault" in geological…
We investigate the weakening of elastic materials through randomly distributed circles and cracks numerically and compare the results to predictions from homogenization theories. We find a good agreement for the case of randomly oriented…
We formulate a theoretical model of the shear failure of a thin film tethered to a rigid substrate. The interface between film and substrate is modeled as a cohesive layer with randomly fluctuating shear strength/fracture energy. We…
Dislocation nucleation in homogeneous crystals initially unfolds as a linear symmetry-breaking elastic instability. In the absence of explicit nucleation centers, such instability develops simultaneously all over the crystal and due to the…
We develop continuum field model for crack propagation in brittle amorphous solids. The model is represented by equations for elastic displacements combined with the order parameter equation which accounts for the dynamics of defects. This…