Related papers: The Intimate Relationship between Cavitation and F…
Cavitation refers to the sudden, unstable expansion of a defect or cavity within a material in response to applied loads, when the loads reach a critical threshold. It is widely recognized as a common failure nucleation mechanism in soft…
Cavitation is a common damage mechanism in soft solids. Here, we study this using a phase-separation technique in stretched, elastic solids to controllably nucleate and grow small cavities by several orders of magnitude. The ability to make…
Understanding and mitigating the failure of reinforced elastomers has been a long-standing challenge in many industrial applications. In an early attempt to shed light on the fundamental mechanisms of failure, Gent and Park presented a…
The relationship between fracture aperture (maximum opening; dmax) and fracture width (w) has been the subject of debate over the past several decades. An empirical power law has been commonly applied to relate these two parameters. Its…
Cavitation has long been recognized as a crucial predictor, or precursor, to the ultimate failure of various materials, ranging from ductile metals to soft and biological materials. Traditionally, cavitation in solids is defined as an…
Thin layers of elastomers bonded to two rigid plates demonstrate unusual failure response. Historically, it has been believed that strongly-bonded layers fail by two distinct mechanisms: (i) internal/external penny-shaped crack nucleation…
Fracture of materials with rate-dependent mechanical behaviour, e.g. polymers, is a highly complex process. For an adequate modelling, the coupling between rate-dependent stiffness, dissipative mechanisms present in the bulk material and…
During hydraulic fracturing, the injection of a pressurized fluid in a brittle elastic medium leads to the formation and growth of fluid-filled fractures. A disc-like or penny-shaped fracture grows radially from a point source during the…
Magma-driven fractures are the main mechanism for magma emplacement in the crust. A fundamental question is how the released fluid controls the propagation dynamics and fracture geometry (depth and breadth) in three dimensions. Analog…
This article reports results concerning the fracture of a 2d triangular lattice of atoms linked by springs. The lattice is submitted to controlled strain tests and the influence of both porosity and temperature on failure is investigated.…
While of paramount importance in material science, the dynamics of cracks still lacks a complete physical explanation. The transition from their slow creep behavior to a fast propagation regime is a notable key, as it leads to full material…
Soft polymers are ubiquitous materials in nature and as engineering materials with properties varying from rate-independent to rate-dependent. Current fracture toughness measures are non-unique for rate-dependent soft materials for varying…
Geologic shear fractures such as faults and slip surfaces involve marked friction along the discontinuities as they are subjected to significant confining pressures. This friction plays a critical role in the growth of these shear…
Fracture growth in a material is strongly influenced by the presence of inhomogeneities, which deviate crack trajectories from rectilinearity and deeply affect failure. Increasing crack tortuosity is connected to enhancement of fracture…
The low elastic modulus of soft materials, combined with geometric nonlinearity and rate dependence, presents significant challenges in the characterization of their mechanical response. We introduce a novel method for measuring the…
Fracture toughness is the material property characterizing resistance to failure. Predicting its value from the solid structure at the atomistic scale remains elusive, even in the simplest situations of brittle fracture. We report here…
In fractured poroelastic media under high differential stress, the shearing of fractures and faults and the corresponding propagation of wing cracks can be induced by fluid injection. Focusing on low-pressure stimulation with fluid…
Propagation of a fluid-driven crack in an impermeable linear elastic medium under axis-symmetric conditions is investigated in the present work. The fluid exerting the pressure inside the crack is an incompressible Newtonian one and its…
Analytical models have been developed for fracture propagation over the last several decades and are now considered with renewed interest; the range of their applicability varies for different materials and different loading conditions.…
Highly-deformable materials, from synthetic hydrogels to biological tissues, are becoming increasingly important from both fundamental and practical perspectives. Their mechanical behaviors, in particular the dynamics of crack propagation…