Related papers: Force-induced breakdown of flexible polymerized me…
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 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,…
We construct and exactly solve a model of an extended Brownian ratchet. The model comprises an arbitrary number of heterogeneous, growing and shrinking filaments which together move a rigid membrane by a ratchet mechanism. The model draws…
We study the force generation by a set of parallel actin filaments growing against an elastic membrane. The elastic membrane tries to stay flat and any deformation from this flat state, either caused by thermal fluctuations or due to…
Two-dimensional crystalline membranes have recently been realized experimentally in such systems as graphene and molybdenum disulfide, sparking a resurgence in interest in their statistical properties. Thermal fluctuations can significantly…
We present experiments on the slow growth of a single crack in a fax paper sheet submitted to a constant force $F$. We find that statistically averaged crack growth curves can be described by only two parameters : the mean rupture time…
We investigate crack propagation in a simple two-dimensional visco-elastic model and find a scaling regime in the relation between the propagation velocity and energy release rate or fracture energy, together with lower and upper bounds of…
Theoretical analyses and experiments have been carried out to investigate fracture behavior of glassy polymers. Our birefringence measurements quantify the local stress buildup at cut tip during different stages of drawing. Based on…
The fracture and severing of polymer chains plays a critical role in the failure of fibrous materials and the regulated turnover of intracellular filaments. Using continuum wormlike chain models, we investigate the fracture of semiflexible…
Elastomers are used in a wide range of applications because of their large strain to failure, low density, and tailorable stiffness and toughness. The mechanical behavior of elastomers derives mainly from the entropic elasticity of the…
The present study focuses on direct numerical simulations of breaking waves generated by a wave plate at constant water depths. The aim is to quantify the dynamics and kinematics in the breaking process, together with the air entrainment…
The buckling of thin elastic sheets is a classic mechanical instability that occurs over a wide range of scales. In the extreme limit of atomically thin membranes like graphene, thermal fluctuations can dramatically modify such mechanical…
We study how crack buckling affects stress and strain in a thin sheet with random disorder. The sheet is modeled as an elastic lattice of beams where each of the beams have individual thresholds for breaking. A statistical distribution with…
We describe and discuss the low-temperature resistivity (and the temperature-dependent inelastic scattering rate) of several different doped 2D semiconductor systems from the perspective of the Planckian hypothesis asserting that…
The fragmentation of a two-dimensional circular disc by lateral impact is investigated using a cell model of brittle solid. The disc is composed of numerous unbreakable randomly shaped convex polygons connected together by simple elastic…
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…
In the present paper, a fiber bundle model in (1+1)-dimensions that simulates the rupture process of a fibrous material pulled by an uniaxial force F is analyzed. In this model the load of a broken fiber is shifted in equal portions onto…
Motivated by some questions arising in the study of quasistatic growth in brittle fracture, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the energy of the solution $u$ of a Neumann problem near a crack in dimension 2. We consider non smooth…
Traditional computational approaches in simulating crack propagation in perfectly brittle materials rely on the estimate of stress intensity factors along the rupture front. This proves highly challenging in 3D when the crack geometry…
The most important characteristics of the fragmentation of heterogeneous solids is that the mass (size) distribution of pieces is described by a power law functional form. The exponent of the distribution displays a high degree of…