Related papers: From microstructural features to effective toughne…

In ordinary solids, material disorder is known to increase the size of the process zone in which stress concentrates at the crack tip, causing a transition from localized to diffuse failure. Here, we report experiments on disordered 2D…

An extensive numerical campaign of particle mechanics calculations that predict microstructure formation and evolution during die compaction, up to relative densities close to one, of monodisperse plastic spheres that exhibit power-law…

The paper develops the stiffness relationship between the movements and forces among a system of discrete interacting grains. The approach is similar to that used in structural analysis, but the stiffness matrix of granular material is…

In this work, a combined modelling approach for crack propagation in defective graphene is presented. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are used to obtain material parameters (Young's modulus and Poisson ratio) and to determine the energy…

We analyze mechanisms and regimes of wave packet spreading in nonlinear disordered media. We predict that wave packets can spread in two regimes of strong and weak chaos. We discuss resonance probabilities, nonlinear diffusion equations,…

The problem of dynamic symmetric branching of an initial single brittle crack propagating at a given speed under plane loading conditions is studied within a continuum mechanics approach. Griffith's energy criterion and the principle of…

We show that the intermittent and self-similar fluctuations displayed by a slow crack during the propagation in a heterogeneous medium can be quantitatively described by an extension of a classical statistical model for fracture. The model…

We study the appearance and evolution of an array of parallel cracks in a thin slab of material that is directionally dried, and show that the cracks penetrate the material uniformly if the drying front is sufficiently sharp. We also show…

We present a molecular dynamics study of force patterns, tensile strength and crack formation in a cohesive granular model where the particles are subjected to swelling or shrinkage gradients. Non-uniform particle size change generates…

We study the elasto-plastic behaviour of materials made of individual (discrete) objects, such as a liquid foam made of bubbles. The evolution of positions and mutual arrangements of individual objects is taken into account through…

When far from equilibrium, many-body systems display behavior that strongly depends on the initial conditions. A characteristic such example is the phenomenon of plasticity of crystalline and amorphous materials that strongly depends on the…

Elastic wave propagation provides a noninvasive way to probe granular materials. The discrete element method using particle configuration as input, allows a micromechanical interpretation on the acoustic response of a given granular system.…

We use atomistic computer simulations to provide a microscopic description of the brittle failure of amorphous materials, and we assess the role of rare events and quenched disorder. We argue that brittle yielding originates at rare soft…

In this paper, we study the preferential stiffness and the crack-tip fields for an elastic porous solid of which material properties are dependent upon the density. Such a description is necessary to describe the failure that can be caused…

We experimentally and computationally analyze impact-shock-induced stress wave propagation in packings of disordered flexible fibers. We find that dispersive wave propagation, associated with large stress attenuation, occurs much more…

Widespread processes in nature and technology are governed by the dynamical transition whereby a material in an initially solid-like state then yields plastically. Major unresolved questions concern whether any material will yield smoothly…

It has been well established that particulate systems show the jamming transition and critical scaling behaviors associated with it. However, our knowledge is limited to (nearly) monodisperse systems. Recently, a binary mixture of jammed…

Fracture is a fundamental mechanism of materials failure. Propagating cracks can exhibit a rich dynamical behavior controlled by a subtle interplay between microscopic failure processes in the crack tip region and macroscopic elasticity. We…

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…

Statistics and thermally activated dynamics of crack nucleation and propagation in a two-dimensional heterogeneous material containing quenched randomly distributed defects are studied theoretically. Using the generalized Griffith criterion…