Related papers: Stability and roughness of tensile cracks in disor…
Using an elastostatic description of crack growth based on the Griffith criterion and the principle of local symmetry, we present a stochastic model describing the propagation of a crack tip in a 2D heterogeneous brittle material. The model…
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 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…
Motivated by recent experiments, we present a study of the dynamics of cracks in thin sheets. While the equations of elasticity for thin plates are well known, there remains the question of path selection for a propagating crack. We invoke…
The relevant parameters at the microstructure scale that govern the macroscopic toughness of disordered brittle materials are investigated theoretically. We focus on planar crack propagation and describe the front evolution as the…
While we fundamentally understand the dynamics of 'simple' cracks propagating in brittle solids within perfect (homogeneous) materials, we do not understand how paths of moving cracks are determined. We experimentally study strongly…
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.…
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 dynamics of planar crack fronts in heterogeneous media is studied using a recently proposed stochastic equation of motion that takes into account nonlinear effects. The analysis is carried for a moving front in the quasi-static regime…
The dynamics of tensile crack fronts restricted to advance in a plane are studied. In an ideal linear elastic medium, a propagating mode along the crack front with a velocity slightly less than the Rayleigh wave velocity, is found to exist.…
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…
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…
We analyze a piece-wise linear elastic model for the propagation of a crack in a stripe geometry under mode III conditions, in the absence of dissipation. The model is continuous in the propagation direction and discrete in the…
In this paper we first obtain the order of stress singularity for a dynamically propagating self-affine fractal crack. We then show that there is always an upper bound to roughness, i.e. a propagating fractal crack reaches a terminal…
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…
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…
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:…
The focus of the article is on fracture criteria for dynamic crack propagation in elastic materials with microstructures. Steady-state propagation of a Mode III semi-infinite crack subject to loading applied on the crack surfaces is…
We propose a theoretical model for branching instabilities in 2-dimensional fracture, offering predictions for when crack branching occurs, how multiple cracks develop, and what is the geometry of multiple branches. The model is based on…
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…