Related papers: Force-induced breakdown of flexible polymerized me…
We study the fracture of reversible double transient networks, constituted of water suspensions of entangled surfactant wormlike micelles reversibly linked by various amounts of telechelic polymers. We provide a state diagram that…
We present a model for the thermally activated propagation of cracks in elastic matrices. The propagation is considered as a subcritical phenomenon, the kinetics of which being described by an Arrhenius law. In this law, we take the thermal…
The stability of a $\beta$-sheeted conformation and its transition into a random coil are studied with a 2D lattice biopolymer model. At low temperature and low external force, the polymer folds back and forth on itself and forms a…
The breakage of a polymer chain of segments, coupled by anharmonic bonds with applied constant external tensile force is studied by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation. We show that the mean life time of the chain becomes progressively…
Bond rupture under the action of external forces is induced by temperature fluctuations. We show that measured forces from single molecule force spectroscopy experiments can be predicted from two quantities describing the bond that are the…
We carried out fully-atomistic reactive molecular dynamics simulations to study the elastic properties and fracture patterns of transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) MoX2 (X=S, Se, Te) membranes, in their 2H and 1T phases, within the…
When a flat sample of medium density fibreboard (MDF) is exposed to radiant heat in an inert atmosphere, primary crack patterns suddenly start to appear over the entire surface before pyrolysis and any charring occurs. Contrary to common…
The problem of diffusive bond-dissociation in a double well potential under application of an external force is scrutinized. We compute the probability distribution of rupture forces and present a detailed discussion of the influence of…
Many new soft but tough rubbery materials have been recently discovered and new applications such as flexible prosthetics, stretchable electrodes or soft robotics continuously emerge. Yet, a credible multi-scale quantitative picture of…
We study the structural and thermodynamic properties of bilayer graphene, a prototype two-layer membrane, by means of Monte Carlo simulations based on the empirical bond order potential LCBOPII. We present the temperature dependence of…
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…
Polymer association at liquid-liquid interfaces is a promising way to spontaneously obtain soft self-healing membranes. In the case of reversible bonding between two polymers, the macromolecules are mobile everywhere within the membrane and…
Fracture toughness is the material property characterizing resistance to failure. Predicting its value from the solid structure at the atomistic scale remains elusive, even in the simplest situations of brittle fracture. We report here…
We study the genesis and the selective propagation of complex crack networks induced by thermal shock or drying of brittle materials. We use a quasi-static gradient damage model to perform large scale numerical simulations showing that the…
We consider reversible breaking of adhesion bonds or folding of proteins under the influence of a constant external force. We discuss the stochastic properties of the unbinding/rebinding events and analyze their mean number and their…
We have constructed a model for the kinetics of rupture of membranes under tension, applying physical principles relevant to lipid bilayers held together by hydrophobic interactions. The membrane is characterized by the bulk compressibility…
Crack formation is conventionally described as a nucleation phenomenon despite the fact that the temperatures necessary to overcome the nucleation barrier are far too high. In this paper we consider the possibility that cracks are created…
We consider a two dimensional lattice model to describe the opening of a crack in hydraulic fracturing. In particular we consider that the material only breaks under tension and the fluid has no pressure drop inside the crack. For the case…
A random fuse network, or equivalently a two-dimensional spring network with quenched disorder, is subjected to a constant load and thermal noise, and studied by means of numerical simulations. Rupture is thermally activated and the…
We introduce a model of fracture which includes the out-of-plane degrees of freedom necessary to describe buckling in a thin-sheet material. The model is a regular square lattice of elastic beams, rigidly connected at the nodes so as to…