Related papers: How super-tough gels break
The slow motion of a crack line is studied via an experiment in which sheets of paper are split into two halves in a ``peel-in-nip'' (PIN) geometry under a constant load, in creep. The velocity-force relation is exponential. The dynamics 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…
The properties of slow crack growth in brittle materials are analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. We propose a model based on a thermally activated rupture process. Considering a 2D spring network submitted to an external load…
Optimal paths play a fundamental role in numerous physical applications ranging from random polymers to brittle fracture, from the flow through porous media to information propagation. Here for the first time we explore the path that is…
Graphene and some graphene like two dimensional materials; hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and silicene have unique mechanical properties which severely limit the suitability of conventional theories used for common brittle and ductile…
Motivated by recent experiments studying the creep and breakup of a protein gel under stress, we introduce a simple mesoscopic model for the irreversible failure of gels and fibrous materials, and demonstrate it to capture much of the…
Double network (DN) materials exhibit anomalous strength and toughness that far exceed the sum of their constituents. While widely exploited, the fundamental physical mechanisms underlying this synergy remain elusive. Here, we show that a…
A theoretical and experimental study of the fragmentation of closed thin shells made of a disordered brittle material is presented. Experiments were performed on brown and white hen egg-shells under two different loading conditions:…
When brittle hydrogels fail, several mechanisms conspire to alter the state of stress near the tip of a crack, and it is challenging to identify which mechanism is dominant. In the fracture of brittle solids, a sufficient far-field stress…
Direct observations of the surface and shape of model nano-colloidal gels associated with measurements of the spatial distribution of water content during drying show that air starts to significantly penetrate the sample when the material…
A double stranded DNA molecule under the stress of a pulling force acting on the strand terminals exhibits a partially denatured structure or can be completely unzipped depending the magnitude of the pulling force. A scaling argument for…
Using a multi-resolution technique, we analyze large in-plane fracture fronts moving slowly between two sintered Plexiglas plates. We find that the roughness of the front exhibits two distinct regimes separated by a crossover length scale…
We model the cytoskeleton as a fractal network by identifying each segment with a simple Kelvin-Voigt element, with a well defined equilibrium length. The final structure retains the elastic characteristics of a solid or a gel, which may…
Ultimately, brittle fracture involves breaking atomic bonds. However, we still lack a clear picture of what happens in the highly deformed region around a moving crack tip. Consequently, we still cannot link nano to atomic-scale phenomena…
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…
Particular aspects of problems ranging from dielectric breakdown to metal insu- lator transition can be studied using electrical o elastic networks. We present an expression for the mean breakdown strength of such networks.First, we intro-…
In this paper, a computational model in (2+1)-dimensions which simulates the rupture process of a fibrous material submitted to a constant force $F$, is analyzed. The roughness exponent $\zeta$ at the boundary that separates two failure…
The fracture strength of ZnO nanowires vertically grown on sapphire substrates was measured in tensile and bending experiments. Nanowires with diameters between 60 and 310 nm and a typical length of 2 um were manipulated with an atomic…
The strengths of glasses are intricately linked to their atomic-level heterogeneity. Atomistic simulations are frequently used to investigate the statistical physics of this relationship, compensating for the limited spatiotemporal…
We use molecular dynamics to study the nucleation of cracks in a two dimensional material without pre-existing cracks. We study models with zero and non-zero shear modulus. In both situations the time required for crack formation obeys an…