Related papers: Fatigue in disordered media
The growth of cracks combines materials science, fracture mechanics, and statistical physics. The importance of fluctuations in the crack velocity is fundamental since it signals that the crack overcomes local barriers such as tough spots…
We present a phase field-based framework for modelling fatigue damage in Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs). The model combines, for the first time: (i) a generalised phase field description of fracture, incorporating multiple phase field…
For the fatigue life of thin-walled components, not only fatigue crack initiation, but also crack growth is decisive. The phase-field method for fracture is a powerful tool to simulate arbitrary crack phenomena. Recently, it has been…
The strength of quasi-brittle materials depends on the ensemble of defects inside the sample and on the way damage accumulates before failure. Using large scale numerical simulations of the random fuse model, we investigate the evolution of…
The dynamics of a crack propagating in an elastic inhomogeneous material is investigated. The variations of the average crack velocity with the external loading are measured for a brittle rock and are shown to display two distinct regimes:…
Multi-phase materials, such as composite materials, exhibit multiple competing failure mechanisms during the growth of a macroscopic defect. For the simulation of the overall fracture process in such materials, we develop a two-phase spring…
The correlations among elements that break in random fuse network fracture are studied, for disorder strong enough to allow for volume damage before final failure. The growth of microfractures is found to be uncorrelated above a…
Materials failure in 3D still poses basic challenges. We study 3D brittle crack dynamics using a phase-field approach, where Gaussian quenched disorder in the fracture energy is incorporated. Disorder is characterized by a correlation…
We study experimentally the fracture mechanisms of a model cohesive granular medium consisting of glass beads held together by solidified polymer bridges. The elastic response of this material can be controlled by changing the cross-linking…
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…
The increasing use of polymer composites in industry asks for the creation of better, faster and cost-effective methods to detect the damage state of such materials. This work presents the investigation of the phase decay , $\Delta{\Phi}$,…
The phase-field approach to fracture has been proven to be a mathematically sound and easy to implement method for computing crack propagation with arbitrary crack paths. Hereby crack growth is driven by energy minimization resulting in a…
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…
The properties of slow crack growth in brittle materials are analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. We propose a model based on a thermally activated rupture process. Considering a 2D spring network submitted to an external load…
Predicting when rupture occurs or cracks progress is a major challenge in numerous elds of industrial, societal and geophysical importance. It remains largely unsolved: Stress enhancement at cracks and defects, indeed, makes the macroscale…
Fatigue crack growth in ductile materials is primarily driven by the interaction between damaging and shielding mechanisms. In the Paris regime, the predominant mechanism for retardation is plasticity-induced crack closure (PICC). However,…
We consider the fracture of a free-standing two-dimensional (2D) elastic-brittle network to be used as protective coating subject to constant tensile stress applied on its rim. Using a Molecular Dynamics simulation with Langevin thermostat,…
The propagation path of quasistatic cracks under monotonic loading is known to be strongly influenced by the anisotropy of the fracture energy in crystalline solids or engineered materials with a regular microstructure. Such cracks…
We investigate the approach to catastrophic failure in a model porous granular material undergoing uniaxial compression. A discrete element computational model is used to simulate both the micro-structure of the material and the complex…
We discuss the threshold activated extremal dynamics that is prevalent in the breakdown processes in heterogeneous materials. We model such systems by an elastic spring network with random breaking thresholds assigned to the springs.…