Related papers: Evolving fracture patterns: columnar joints, mud c…
Volume alteration in solid materials is a common cause of material failure. Here we investigate the crack formation in thin elastic layers attached to a substrate. We show that small variations in the volume contraction and substrate…
Fracture networks are ubiquitous in nature, spanning scales from millimeter-sized cracks in botanical peels to hundred-kilometer-long lineae on planetary satellites. The propagation of a crack is a complex, nonlinear phenomenon governed by…
A fascinating class of patterns, often encountered in nature as meandering cracks on rocks, dried-out fields and tectonic plates is produced by the fracture of solids. Here we report the observation and modeling of an unusual type of…
We introduce a model for the dynamics of mud cracking in the limit of of extremely thin layers. In this model the growth of fracture proceeds by selecting the part of the material with the smallest (quenched) breaking threshold. In…
When a crack interacts with material heterogeneities, its front distorts and adopts complex tortuous configurations that are reminiscent of the energy barriers encountered during crack propagation. As such, the study of crack front…
We investigate the origins of the widely-observed "en passant" crack pattern which forms through interactions between two approaching cracks. A rectangular elastic plate is notched on each long side and then subjected to quasistatic…
During brittle crack propagation, a smooth crack front curve frequently becomes disjoint, generating a stepped crack and a material ligament that unites the newly formed crack fronts. These universal features fundamentally alter the…
We propose a new method for quantitative characterization of spatial network-like patterns with loops, such as surface fracture patterns, leaf vein networks and patterns of urban streets. Such patterns are not well characterized by purely…
We introduce and study a general framework for modeling the evolution of crack networks. The evolution steps are triggered by exponential clocks corresponding to local micro-events, and thus reflect the state of the pattern. In an…
The evolution and spatial structure of displacement fronts in fractures with self-affine rough walls are studied by numerical simulations. The fractures are open and the two faces are identical but shifted along their mean plane, either…
We examine geophysical crack patterns using the mean field theory of convex mosaics. We assign the pair $(\bar n^*,\bar v^*)$ of average corner degrees to each crack pattern and we define two local, random evolutionary steps $R_0$ and…
Hierarchical crack patterns that arise during the drying of thin films of colloidal dispersions or polymer solutions on a solid substrate are of interest both from a fundamental standpoint and in the context of the creation of transparent…
We study pattern selection of cracks in directionally drying fractures by analyzing the experimental systems recently devised by C. Allain and L. Limat. [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 74}, 2981 (1995).] Proposing a simple picture of crack…
Nonlocal quasistatic fracture evolution for interacting cracks is developed and supporting numerical examples are presented. The approach is implicit and is based on local stationarity and fixed point methods. It is proved that the fracture…
In this contribution, a variational diffuse modeling framework for cracks in heterogeneous media is presented. A static order parameter smoothly bridges the discontinuity at material interfaces, while an evolving phase-field captures the…
A study of crack patterns in laponite films of different thickness is presented. Two cracking regimes are observed. The earlier with a higher rate of desiccation and shrinking has predominantly four-fold vertices in the crack network, while…
We investigate the formation of spiral crack patterns during the desiccation of thin layers of precipitates in contact with a substrate. This symmetry-breaking fracturing mode is found to arise naturally not from torsion forces, but from a…
We study experimentally the paths of an assembly of cracks growing in interaction in a heterogeneous two-dimensional elastic brittle material submitted to uniaxial stress. For a given initial crack assembly geometry, we observe two types of…
This contribution presents a diffuse framework for modeling cracks in heterogeneous media. Interfaces are depicted by static phase-fields. This concept allows the use of non-conforming meshes. Another phase-field is used to describe the…
A complex network approach on a rough fracture is developed. In this manner, some hidden metric spaces (similarity measurements) between apertures profiles are set up and a general evolutionary network in two directions (in parallel and…