Related papers: Force-induced breakdown of flexible polymerized me…
The break-up of a two-dimensional circular disc by normal and oblique impact on a hard frictionless plate is investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. The disc is composed of numerous unbreakable randomly shaped convex polygons…
Soft polymers are ubiquitous materials in nature and as engineering materials with properties varying from rate-independent to rate-dependent. Current fracture toughness measures are non-unique for rate-dependent soft materials for varying…
We investigate the rate-dependent fracture of vitrimers by conducting a tear test. Based on the relationship between the frac-ture energy and the thickness of vitrimer films, we, for the first time, obtain the intrinsic fracture energy and…
We use molecular dynamics to study the vibrations of a thermally fluctuating two-dimensional elastic membrane clamped at both ends. We directly extract the eigenmodes from resonant peaks in the frequency domain of the time-dependent height…
Fracture of highly stretched materials challenges our view of how things break. We directly visualize rupture of tough double-network (DN) gels at >50\% strain. During fracture, crack tip shapes obey a $x\sim y^{1.6}$ power-law, in contrast…
We study a class of models for brittle fracture: elastic theory models which allow for cracks but not for plastic flow. We show that these models exhibit, at all finite temperatures, a transition to fracture under applied load similar to…
We have designed a new experimental setup able to investigate fracture of soft materials at small scales. At high crack velocity, where energy is mostly dissipated through viscoelastic processes, we observe an increasingly large high strain…
Large-scale molecular simulations are performed to investigate tensile failure of polymer interfaces as a function of welding time $t$. Changes in the tensile stress, mode of failure and interfacial fracture energy $G_I$ are correlated to…
While of paramount importance in material science, the dynamics of cracks still lacks a complete physical explanation. The transition from their slow creep behavior to a fast propagation regime is a notable key, as it leads to full material…
We have carried out systematic fracture experiments in a single edge notch geometry over a range of stretch rates on dual crosslink hydrogels made from polyvinyl alcohol chains chemically crosslinked with glutaraldehyde and physically…
A recent experimental study showed that an induced folded flap of graphene can spontaneously drive itself its tearing and peeling off a substrate, thus producing long, micrometer sized, regular trapezoidal-shaped folded graphene…
When a thin film moderately adherent to a substrate is subjected to residual stress, the cooperation between fracture and delamination leads to unusual fracture patterns, such as spirals, alleys of crescents and various types of strips, all…
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,…
We study the mechanics of pressurized graphene membranes using an experimental configuration that allows the determination of the elasticity of graphene and the adhesion energy between a substrate and a graphene (or other two-dimensional…
Motivated by a freely suspended graphene and polymerized membranes in soft and biological matter we present a detailed study of a tensionless elastic sheet in the presence of thermal fluctuations and quenched disorder. The manuscript is…
We use molecular dynamics to study the nucleation of cracks in a two dimensional material without pre-existing cracks. We study models with zero and non-zero shear modulus. In both situations the time required for crack formation obeys an…
Self-diffusion of a polymer chain in a melt is studied by Monte Carlo simulations of the bond fluctuation model, where only the excluded volume interaction is taken into account. Polymer chains, each of which consists of $N$ segments, are…
We obtain the Paris law of fatigue crack propagation in a disordered solid using a fuse network model where the accumulated damage in each resistor increases with time as a power law of the local current amplitude. When a resistor reaches…
The physics of membranes, a classic subject, acquires new momentum from two-dimensional (2D) materials multilayers. This work reports the surprising results emerged during a theoretical study of equilibrium geometry of bilayers as…
In this paper, we present a qualitative analysis of the dissipative processes during the failure of the interface between a viscoelastic polymer and a solid surface. We reassess the "viscoelastic trumpet" model [P.-G. de Gennes, C. R. Acad.…