Related papers: How super-tough gels break
We study computationally the creep and yielding of athermal gels and fibre network materials under a constant imposed shear stress, within a minimal model of interconnected filaments with central forces in $d=2$ spatial dimensions. Each…
We introduce a lattice model able to describe damage and yielding in heterogeneous materials ranging from brittle to ductile ones. Ductile fracture surfaces, obtained when the system breaks once the strain is completely localized, are shown…
We calculate analytically the phase diagram of a two-dimensional square crystal and its wrapped version with defects under external homogeneous stress as a function of temperature using a simple elastic lattice model that allows for defect…
We consider the surface melting of metal nanowires by solving a phenomenological two-parabola Landau model and by conducting molecular dynamics simulations of nickel and aluminium nanowires. The model suggests that surface melting will…
Cracks in soft materials exhibit diverse dynamic patterns, involving straight, oscillation, branching, and supershear fracture. Here, we successfully reproduce these crack morphologies in a two-dimensional pre-strained fracture scenario and…
In fracture mechanics, polyacrylamide hydrogels have been widely used as a model material for experiments, benefited from its optical transparency, fracture brittleness, and low Rayleigh wave velocity. To describe the brittle fracture in…
In this paper theoretical and statistical/experimental criteria for determining the nanoscale strength of materials are proposed. In particular, quantized criteria in fracture mechanics, dynamic fracture mechanics and fatigue, as well as an…
We study numerically the growth of a crack in an elastic medium under the influence of a travelling shockwave. We describe the implementation of a fast algorithm which is perfectly suited for a data parallel computer. Using large scale…
We investigate the weakening of elastic materials through randomly distributed circles and cracks numerically and compare the results to predictions from homogenization theories. We find a good agreement for the case of randomly oriented…
Quantitative understanding of the fracture toughness of metallic glasses, including the associated ductile-to-brittle transitions, is not yet available. Here we use a simple model of plastic deformation in glasses, coupled to an advanced…
Stress enhancement in the vicinity of brittle cracks makes the macro-scale failure properties extremely sensitive to the micro-scale material disorder. Therefore: (i) Fracturing systems often display a jerky dynamics, so-called crackling…
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…
Composite materials are often stronger than their constituents. We demonstrate this through a spring network model on a square lattice. Two different types of sites (A and B) are distributed randomly on the lattice, representing two…
We reveal intrinsic fracture nonreciprocity, manifesting as directional asymmetry in crack resistance, in two-dimensional heterostructures engineered through lattice-mismatched interfaces. Density-functional theory combined with…
We present dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements of soft polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and polyacrylamide(PA) polymer gels prepared with trapped bodies (latex spheres or maghemite nanoparticles). We show that the anomalous…
We show that gels formed by arrested spinodal decomposition of protein solutions exhibit elastic properties in two distinct frequency domains, both elastic moduli exhibiting a remarkably strong dependence on volume fraction. Considering the…
When exposed to strong shearing, the particles in a crystal will rearrange and ultimately, the crystal will break by forming large nonaffine defects. Even for the initial stage of this process, only little effort has been devoted to the…
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…
In this work, distortion gradient plasticity is used to gain insight into material deformation ahead of a crack tip. This also constitutes the first fracture mechanics analysis of gradient plasticity theories adopting Nye's tensor as primal…
In terms of nonlinear material fracture mechanics, the real (discrete)-structure material fracture model has been developed. The model rests on the demonstration of the fact that crack resistance $K_{1c}=2\sigma \sqrt l$ and fracture…