Related papers: Approach to failure in porous granular materials u…
We study the failure properties of fiber bundles with a finite lower cutoff of the strength disorder varying the range of interaction between the limiting cases of completely global and completely local load sharing. Computer simulations…
In a freely cooling granular material fluctuations in density and temperature cause position dependent energy loss. Due to strong local dissipation, pressure and energy drop rapidly and material moves from `hot' to `cold' regions, leading…
We study experimentally the fracture mechanisms of a model cohesive granular medium consisting of glass beads held together by solidified polymer bridges. The elastic response of this material can be controlled by changing the cross-linking…
Most of the research concerting crack propagation in discrete media is concerned with specific types of external loading: displacements on the boundaries, or constant energy fluxes or feeding waves originating from infinity. In this paper…
Brittle materials fail catastrophically. In consequence of their limited flaw-tolerance, failure occurs by localized fracture and is typically a dynamic process. Recently, experiments on epithelial cell monolayers have revealed that this…
Various kinds of heterogeneity in solids including atomistic discreteness affect the fracture strength as well as the failure dynamics remarkably. Here we study the effects of an initial crack in a discrete model for fracture in…
Cracks are created by massive breakage of molecular or atomic bonds. The latter, in its turn, leads to the highly localized loss of material, which is the reason why even closed cracks are visible by a naked eye. Thus, fracture can be…
Soft or weakly-consolidated sand refers to porous materials composed of particles (or grains) weakly held together to form a solid but that can be easily broken when subjected to stress. These materials do not behave as conventional…
We study the creep rupture of bundles of viscoelastic fibers occurring under uniaxial constant tensile loading. A novel fiber bundle model is introduced which combines the viscoelastic constitutive behaviour and the strain controlled…
We investigate the fragmentation of ring-like brittle structures under explosive loading using a discrete element model. By systematically varying ring thickness and strain rate, we uncover a transition from one-dimensional (1D)…
A mix-mode cohesive fracture model considering tension, compression and shear material behaviour is presented, which has wide applications to geotechnical problems. The model considers both elastic and inelastic displacements. Inelastic…
Material produced by current metal additive manufacturing processes is susceptible to variable performance due to imprecise control of internal porosity, surface roughness, and conformity to designed geometry. Using a double U-notched…
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…
This work proposes an experimental framework to characterize a cohesive law for mode-II interlaminar fracture and demonstrates its implementation. For a size effect study, geometrically scaled end-notched flexure specimens were tested using…
The discrete element method constitutes a general class of modeling techniques to simulate the microscopic behavior (i.e. at the particle scale) of granular/soil materials. We present a contact dynamics method, accounting for the cohesive…
We report tensile failure experiments on polyurethane (PU) foams. Experiments have been performed by imposing a constant strain rate. We work on heterogeneous materials for whom the failure does not occur suddenly and can develop as a…
Continuum mechanics describes compressive failure as a standard bifurcation in the response of a material to an increasing load: damage, which initially grows uniformly in the material, localizes within a thin band at failure. Yet,…
The distribution of the magnitudes of damage avalanches during a failure process typically follows a power law. When these avalanches are recorded close to the point at which the system fails catastrophically, we find that the power law has…
Earthquakes are complex phenomena characterized by some fundamental seismic laws. However, under the framework of brittle fracture in disordered material, these universal scaling behaviors, especially for critical exponents, are still far…
We study the failure properties of fiber bundles when continuous rupture goes on due to the application of external load on the bundles. We take the two extreme models: equal load sharing model (democratic fiber bundles) and local load…