Related papers: Towards understanding the geometry effects on frac…
Over the past seven years, full-field analyses of a wide range of classical as well as modern quasi-static fracture experiments on nominally elastic brittle materials -- ranging from hard ceramics to soft elastomers -- have repeatedly…
We present an experimental and theoretical study of the shape of fragments generated by explosive and impact loading of closed shells. Based on high speed imaging, we have determined the fragmentation mechanism of shells. Experiments have…
Using a geometrically motivated 8-parameter ansatz through the thickness, we reduce a three-dimensional shell-like geometrically nonlinear Cosserat material to a fully two-dimensional shell model. Curvature effects are fully taken into…
We investigate the role of architected thin films in the interfacial failure properties of bi-layer composites. Our results show that, while graded structures can be used to prescribe failure at the interface, they do not offer significant…
We study analytically the development of gravitational instability in an expanding shell having finite thickness. We consider three models for the radial density profile of the shell: (i) an analytic uniform-density model, (ii) a…
Experimentally measuring the elastic properties of thin biological surfaces is non-trivial, particularly when they are curved. One technique that may be used is the indentation of a thin sheet of material by a rigid indenter, whilst…
The resistance to fracture of reversible biopolymer hydrogels is an important control factor of the cutting/slicing and eating characteristics of food gels. It is also critical for their utilization in tissue engineering, for which…
Cutting-edge smart materials are transforming the domains of soft robotics, actuators, and sensors by harnessing diverse non-mechanical stimuli, such as electric and magnetic fields. Accurately modelling their physical behaviour…
Finite element calculations of dynamic fracture based on embedding cohesive surfaces in a continuum indicate that the predictions are sensitive to the cohesive law used. Simulations were performed on a square block in plane strain with an…
Recent findings suggest that shell protein distribution and morphology of bacterial microcompartments regulate the chemical fluxes facilitating reactions which dictate their biological function. We explore how the morphology and component…
We report results on the interrelation between driving force, roughness exponent, branching and crack speed in a finite element model. We show that for low applied loadings the crack speed reaches the values measured in the experiments, and…
We present an intuitive physical picture for fractures in nacre-type stratified materials via scaling arguments: strain distributions around a fracture are rather different depending on directions and size of fractures. We thus observe that…
The nucleation and propagation of hydrofractures by injection of over pressured fluids in an elastic and isotropic medium are studied experimentally. Non-Newtonian fluids are injected inside a gelatine whose mechanical properties are…
The phenomenon of arrest of an unstably-growing crack due to a curved weak interface is investigated. The weak interface can produce the deviation of the crack path, trapping the crack at the interface, leading to stable crack growth for…
We investigate by numerical simulation the system size dependence of the shear delamination strength of thin elastic films. The films are connected to a rigid substrate by a disordered interface containing a pre-existing crack. The size…
The phase field fracture method has emerged as a promising computational tool for modelling a variety of problems including, since recently, hydrogen embrittlement and stress corrosion cracking. In this work, we demonstrate the potential of…
We review microstructural fracture growth models suitable for the study of hydraulic fracture processes in disordered porous materials and present some basic results. It is shown that microstructural models exhibit certain similarities to…
Thin elastic sheets appear in systems ranging from graphene to biological membranes, where phenomena such as wrinkling, folding, and thermal fluctuations originate from geometric nonlinearities. These effects are treated within weakly…
We analyse a problem of a hydraulic fracture driven by a non-Newtonian shear-thinning fluid. Fluid viscosity is described by the four-parameter truncated power-law model. By varying the parameters of the rheological model we investigate…
We study the interaction between two cracks propagating quasistatically during the tearing of a thin brittle sheet. We show that the cracks attract each other following a path described by a power law resulting from the competition between…