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Interest in air breakdown phenomena has recently been re-kindled with the advent of advanced virtual prototyping of radio frequency (RF) sources for use in high power microwave (HPM) weapons technology. Air breakdown phenomena are of…
Environmentally assisted cracking phenomena are widespread across the transport, defence, energy and construction sectors. However, predicting environmentally assisted fractures is a highly cross-disciplinary endeavour that requires…
The scaling laws describing the roughness development of crack surfaces are incorporated into the Griffith criterion. We show that, in the case of a Family-Vicsek scaling, the energy balance leads to a purely elastic brittle behavior. On…
Understanding the microscopic phenomena behind vacuum arc ignition and generation is crucial for being able to control the breakdown rate, thus improving the effectiveness of many high-voltage applications where frequent breakdowns limit…
Crack growth is the basic mechanism leading to the failure of brittle materials. Engineering addresses this problem within the framework of continuum mechanics, which links deterministically the crack motion to the applied loading. Such an…
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…
Application of electronic railway systems as well as the implication of Automatic Train Control (ATC) System has increased the safety of rail transportation. However, one of the most important causes of accidents on the railway is rail…
The failure of materials and interfaces is mediated by cracks, nearly singular dissipative structures that propagate at velocities approaching the speed of sound. Crack initiation and subsequent propagation -- the dynamic process of…
The difference between free surface energy and fracture toughness in amorphous silica is studied via multi-scale simulations. We combine the homogenization of a molecular dynamics fracture model with a phase-field approach to track and…
The classical problem of foam film rupture dynamics has been investigated when surfaces exhibit very high rigidity due to the presence of specific surfactants. Two new features are reported. First a strong deviation to the well-known…
The failure of frictional interfaces -- the process of frictional rupture -- is widely assumed to feature crack-like properties, with far-reaching implications for various disciplines, ranging from engineering tribology to earthquake…
Graphene and few-layer graphene at high bias expose a wealth of phenomena due to the high temperatures reached. With in-situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) we observe directly how the current modifies the structure, and vice versa.…
When fast cracks become unstable to microscopic branching (micro-branching), fracture no longer occurs in an effective 2D medium. We follow in-plane crack front dynamics via real-time measurements in brittle gels as micro-branching unfolds…
A widespread framework for understanding frictional rupture, such as earthquakes along geological faults, invokes an analogy to ordinary cracks. A distinct feature of ordinary cracks is that their near edge fields are characterized by a…
We present a model that explains the origin and predicts the statistical properties of columnar quasi-hexagonal crack patterns, as observed in the columnar jointing of basaltic lava flows. Irregular fractures appear at the surface of the…
Fractoluminescence experiments are performed on two kinds of silicate glasses. All the light spectra collected during dynamic fracture reveal a black body radiator behaviour, which is interpreted as a crack velocity-dependent temperature…
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…
Hard x-ray spectral breaks are explained in terms of a 1D model with a co-spatial return current. We study 19 flares observed by RHESSI (Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) with strong spectral breaks at energies around a few…
One of the most puzzling aspects of the high $T_c$ superconductors is the appearance of Fermi arcs in the normal state of the underdoped cuprate materials. These are loci of low energy excitations covering part of the fermi surface, that…
When cracks form in a thin contracting layer, they sequentially break the layer into smaller and smaller pieces. A rectilinear crack pattern encodes information about the order of crack formation, as later cracks tend to intersect with…