Related papers: From microstructural features to effective toughne…
Understanding the role played by the microstructure of materials on their macroscopic failure properties is an important challenge in solid mechanics. Indeed, when a crack propagates at a heterogeneous brittle interface, the front is…
The propagation of (planar) cracks in a heterogeneous brittle material characterized by a random field of toughness is considered, taking into account explicitly the effect of the crack front roughness on the local stress intensity factor.…
We study the stability and roughness of propagating cracks in heterogeneous brittle two-dimensional elastic materials. We begin by deriving an equation of motion describing the dynamics of such a crack in the framework of Linear Elastic…
We investigate numerically the dynamics of crack propagation along a weak plane using a model consisting of fibers connecting a soft and a hard clamp. This bottom-up model has previously been shown to contain the competition of two crack…
The propagation of an adhesive crack through an anisotropic heterogeneous interface is considered. Tuning the local toughness distribution function and spatial correlation is numerically shown to induce a transition between weak to strong…
Brittle fracturing of materials is common in natural and industrial processes over a variety of length scales. Knowledge of individual particle dynamics is vital to obtain deeper insight into the atomistic processes governing crack…
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…
We employ a recently developed model that allows the study of two-dimensional brittle crack propagation under fixed grip boundary conditions. The crack development highlights the importance of voids which appear ahead of the crack as…
We study the effect of the sample thickness in planar crack front propagation in a disordered elastic medium using the random fuse model. We employ different loading conditions and we test their stability with respect to crack growth. We…
We examine theoretically and numerically fast propagation of a tensile crack along unidimensional strips with periodically evolving toughness. In such dynamic fracture regimes, crack front waves form and transport front disturbances along…
The effective adhesive properties of heterogeneous thin films are characterized through a combined experimental and theoretical investigation. By bridging scales, we show how variations of elastic or adhesive properties at the microscale…
A heterogeneous brittle material characterized by a random field of local toughness Kc(x) can be represented by an equivalent homogeneous medium of toughness, Keff. Homogenization refers to a process of estimating Keff from the local field…
Brittle solids are often toughened by adding a second-phase material. This practice often results in composites with material heterogeneities on the meso scale: large compared to the scale of the process zone but small compared to that of…
We have studied the propagation of a crack front along the heterogeneous weak plane of a transparent poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) block using two different loading conditions: imposed constant velocity and creep relaxation. We have…
The long-ranged elastic model, which is believed to describe the evolution of a self-affine rough crack-front, is analyzed to linear and non-linear orders. It is shown that the nonlinear terms, while important in changing the front…
The dynamics and stability of brittle cracks are not yet fully understood. Here we use the Willis-Movchan 3D linear perturbation formalism [J. Mech. Phys. Solids {\bf 45}, 591 (1997)] to study the out-of-plane stability of planar crack…
We present a continuum model for the propagation of cracks and fractures in brittle materials. The components of the strain tensor $\epsilon$ are the fundamental variables. The evolution equations are based on a free energy that reduces to…
In a previous paper (Leblond et al., 2011), we proposed a theoretical interpretation of the experimentally well known instability of coplanar crack propagation in mode I+III. The interpretation relied on a stability analysis based on…
Dynamic crack propagation drives catastrophic solid failures. In many amorphous brittle materials, sufficiently fast crack growth involves small-scale, high-frequency microcracking damage localized near the crack tip. The ultra-fast…
Statistical models are essential to get a better understanding of the role of disorder in brittle disordered solids. Fiber bundle models play a special role as a paradigm, with a very good balance of simplicity and non-trivial effects. We…