Related papers: Crackling vs. continuum-like dynamics in brittle f…
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…
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…
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:…
Stress enhancement in the vicinity of brittle cracks makes the macro-scale failure properties extremely sensitive to the micro-scale material disorder. Therefore: (i) Fracturing systems often display a jerky dynamics, so-called crackling…
This paper presents a framework for modeling failure in quasi-brittle geomaterials under different loading conditions. A micromechanics-based model is proposed in which the field variables are linked to physical mechanisms at the microcrack…
We derive here a linear elastic stochastic description for slow crack growth in heterogeneous materials. This approach succeeds in reproducing quantitatively the intermittent crackling dynamics observed recently during the slow propagation…
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 temporal evolution of mechanical energy and spatially-averaged crack speed are both monitored in slowly fracturing artificial rocks. Both signals display an irregular burst-like dynamics, with power-law distributed fluctuations spanning…
The dynamics of rapid brittle cracks is commonly studied in the framework of linear elastic fracture mechanics where nonlinearities are neglected. However, recent experimental and theoretical work demonstrated explicitly the importance of…
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…
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…
A continuum model of fracture that describes, in principle, the propagation and interaction of arbitrary distributions of cracks and voids with evolving topology without a fracture criterion is developed. It involves a 'law of motion' for…
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…
Crack propagation is studied numerically using a continuum phase-field approach to mode III brittle fracture. The results shed light on the physics that controls the speed of accelerating cracks and the characteristic branching instability…
We study a class of models for brittle fracture: elastic theory models which allow for cracks but not for plastic flow. We show that these models exhibit, at all finite temperatures, a transition to fracture under applied load similar to…
We investigate dynamic fracture of heterogeneous materials experimentally by measuring displacement fields as a rupture propagates through a periodic array of obstacles of controlled fracture energy. Our measurements demonstrate the…
We argue that nucleation of brittle cracks in initially flawless soft elastic solids is preceded by a nonlinear elastic instability, which cannot be captured without accounting for geometrical precise description of finite elastic…
Disorder and long-range interactions are two of the key components that make material failure an interesting playfield for the application of statistical mechanics. The cornerstone in this respect has been lattice models of the fracture in…
A mathematical continuum limit of the interaction energy of a random particle chain is shown to yield new insight into the effect of microscopic heterogeneities on macroscopic fracture laws in brittle materials. We derive a formula which…
While crack nucleation and propagation in the brittle or quasi-brittle regime can be predicted via variational or material-force-based phase field fracture models, these models often assume that the underlying elastic response of the…