Related papers: Damage mechanisms in the dynamic fracture of nomin…
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…
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…
We present high resolution measurements of the displacement and strain fields near the tip of a dynamic (Mode I) crack. The experiments are performed on polyacrylamide gels, brittle elastomers whose fracture dynamics mirror those of typical…
Dynamic fracture experiments were performed in PMMA over a wide range of velocities and reveal that the fracture energy exhibits an abrupt 3-folds increase from its value at crack initiation at a well-defined critical velocity, below the…
Various fields such as mechanical engineering, materials science, etc., have seen a widespread use of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) at the continuum scale. LEFM is also routinely applied to the atomic scale. However, its…
Cracks, the major vehicle for material failure, tend to accelerate to high velocities in brittle materials. In three-dimensions, cracks generically undergo a micro-branching instability at about 40% of their sonic limiting velocity. Recent…
Predicting crack trajectories in brittle solids remains an open challenge in fracture mechanics due to the non-local nature of crack propagation and the way cracks modify their surrounding medium. Here, we develop a framework for…
The common approach to crack dynamics, linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM), assumes infinitesimal strains and predicts a $r^{-1/2}$ strain divergence at a crack tip. We extend this framework by deriving a weakly nonlinear fracture…
Theoretical analyses and experiments have been carried out to investigate fracture behavior of glassy polymers. Our birefringence measurements quantify the local stress buildup at cut tip during different stages of drawing. Based on…
Ductile fracture of metallic materials typically involves the elastoplastic deformation and associated damaging process. The nonlocal lattice particle method (LPM) can be extended to model this complex behavior. Recently, a distortional…
Experiments of pure tensile fracture in brittle gels reveal a new dynamic oscillatory instability whose onset occurs at a critical velocity, Vc = 0.87 Cs, where Cs is the shear wave speed. Until Vc crack dynamics are well described by…
We present a subcritical fracture growth model, coupled with the elastic redistribution of the acting mechanical stress along rugous rupture fronts. We show the ability of this model to quantitatively reproduce the intermittent dynamics of…
Progressive damage, which eventually leads to failure, is ubiquitous in biological and synthetic polymers. The simplest case to consider is that of elastomeric materials, which can undergo large reversible deformations with negligible rate…
Important physical observations in rupture dynamics such as static fault friction, short-slip, self-healing, and supershear phenomenon in cracks are studied. A continuum model of rupture dynamics is developed using the field dislocation…
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 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:…
We study how the loading rate, specimen geometry and microstructural texture select the dynamics of a crack moving through an heterogeneous elastic material in the quasi-static approximation. We find a transition, fully controlled by two…
Failure in brittle materials under dynamic loading conditions is a result of the propagation and coalescence of microcracks. Simulating this mechanism at the continuum level is computationally expensive or, in some cases, intractable. The…
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 rupture of the interface joining two materials under frictional contact controls their macroscopic sliding. Interface rupture dynamics depend markedly on the mechanical properties of the bulk materials that bound the frictional…