Related papers: Crackling vs. continuum-like dynamics in brittle f…
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 introduce a model of fracture which includes the out-of-plane degrees of freedom necessary to describe buckling in a thin-sheet material. The model is a regular square lattice of elastic beams, rigidly connected at the nodes so as to…
The dynamics of a single crack moving through a heterogeneous medium is studied in the quasi-static approximation. Equations of motion for the crack front are formulated and the resulting scaling behaviour analyzed. In a model scalar system…
A probabilistic approach to phase-field brittle and ductile fracture with random material and geometric properties is proposed within this work. In the macroscopic failure mechanics, materials properties and exactness of spatial quantities…
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…
Breakage is generally understood in mechanical terms, yet nano-structures can rupture not only under external loads but also via thermal activation. Here we treat in a general framework the statistical mechanics of thermally induced…
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…
The possible paralelism existing between phase transitions and fracture in disordered materials, is discussed using the well-known Fiber Bundle Models and a probabilistic approach suited to smooth fluctuations near the critical point. Two…
Fracture processes in multi-phase solids are inherently complex due to multiple competing mechanisms. Here, we investigate the elastic and fracture behaviour of two-phase solids, comprising a fragile phase and a tough phase using a…
We study a variant of the variational model for the quasi-static growth of brittle fractures proposed by Francfort and Marigo. The main feature of our model is that, in the discrete-time formulation, in each step we do not consider absolute…
We briefly review a number of important recent experimental and theoretical developments in the field of dynamic fracture. Topics include experimental validation of the equations of motion for straight tensile cracks (in both infinite media…
The fracture behavior of brittle and ductile materials can be strongly influenced by thermal fluctuations, especially in micro- and nano-devices as well as in rubberlike and biological materials. However, temperature effects, in particular…
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…
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…
We study the sample size dependence of the strength of disordered materials with a flaw, by numerical simulations of lattice models for fracture. We find a crossover between a regime controlled by the fluctuations due to disorder and…
In this work we present the design of a new test geometry inspired by the Tapered Double Cantilever Beam (TDCB) specimen that is shown to provide an improved characterization of the fracture properties of brittle solids. First, we show that…
Recently proposed phase-field models offer self-consistent descriptions of brittle fracture. Here, we analyze these theories in the quasistatic regime of crack propagation. We show how to derive the laws of crack motion either by using…
Numerical simulations of concrete fracture performed with a probabilistic mesoscale discrete model are presented. The model represents a substantial part of material randomness by assigning random locations to the largest aggregates. 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…
The research reveals the existence of a constant characteristic time of preparatory micro-structural processes before the onset of macro-failure at various high loading rates of brittle and quasi-brittle materials. The presence of this…