Related papers: How super-tough gels break
Disordered biopolymer gels have striking mechanical properties including strong nonlinearities. In the case of athermal gels (such as collagen-I) the nonlinearity has long been associated with a crossover from a bending dominated to a…
When fast cracks become unstable to microscopic branching (micro-branching), fracture no longer occurs in an effective 2D medium. We follow in-plane crack front dynamics via real-time measurements in brittle gels as micro-branching unfolds…
Obstructions influence the growth and expansion of bodies in a wide range of settings -- but isolating and understanding their impact can be difficult in complex environments. Here, we study obstructed growth/expansion in a model system…
Linear complexions are stable defect states, where the stress field associated with a dislocation induces a local phase transformation that remains restricted to nanoscale dimensions. As these complexions are born at the defects which…
The fatigue fracture surfaces of a metallic alloy, and the stress corrosion fracture surfaces of glass are investigated as a function of crack velocity. It is shown that in both cases, there are two fracture regimes, which have a well…
This paper deals with the theoretical and numerical analysis of dynamic fracture of dissimilar chain consisting of masses lined by springs. Such a structure exhibits quite different dynamic properties in comparison with a symmetrical…
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…
Fragmentation can be observed in nature and in everyday life on a wide range of length scales and for all kinds of technical applications. Most studies on dynamic failure focus on the behaviour of bulk systems in one, two and three…
Fractures are a critical process in how materials wear, weaken, and fail whose unpredictable behavior can have dire consequences. While the behavior of smooth cracks in ideal materials is well understood, it is assumed that for real,…
We perform fracture experiments on nanoscale phase separated glasses and measure crack surface roughness by atomic force microscopy. The ability of tuning the phase domain size by thermal treatment allows us to test thoroughly the…
We study experimentally the slow growth of a single crack in a fibrous material and observe stepwise growth dynamics. We model the material as a lattice where the crack is pinned by elastic traps and grows due to thermally activated stress…
During brittle crack propagation, a smooth crack front curve frequently becomes disjoint, generating a stepped crack and a material ligament that unites the newly formed crack fronts. These universal features fundamentally alter the…
The damage and fracture of materials are technologically of enormous interest due to their economic and human cost. They cover a wide range of phenomena like e.g. cracking of glass, aging of concrete, the failure of fiber networks in the…
A theoretical study based on dimensional analysis and fractal geometry of crack profiles is proposed to establish the relation between their fractal dimension D (1<D<2) and the parameters defining the fatigue crack propagation rate. The…
We use large scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to determine the tensile yield mechanism of orthorhombic polyethylene (PE) crystals with finite chains spanning $10^2-10^4$ carbons in length. We find the yield stress $\sigma_y$…
The patterns arising from the differential swelling of gels are investigated experimentally and theoretically as a model for the differential growth of living tissues. Two geometries are considered: a thin strip of soft gel clamped to a…
Materials failure in 3D still poses basic challenges. We study 3D brittle crack dynamics using a phase-field approach, where Gaussian quenched disorder in the fracture energy is incorporated. Disorder is characterized by a correlation…
Crack formation is conventionally described as a nucleation phenomenon despite the fact that the temperatures necessary to overcome the nucleation barrier are far too high. In this paper we consider the possibility that cracks are created…
When branching is suppressed, rapid cracks undergo a dynamic instability from a straight to an oscillatory path at a critical velocity $v_c$. In a systematic experimental study using a wide range of different brittle materials, we first…
Toughness describes the ability of a material to resist fracture or crack propagation. It is demonstrated here that fracture toughness of a material can be asymmetric, i.e., the resistance of a medium to a crack propagating from right to…