Related papers: How moving cracks in brittle solids choose their p…
Predicting the growth of large cracks in brittle materials is a fundamental unresolved problem in fracture mechanics. Under out-of-plane shear loading, an initially planar crack may fragment into multiple cracks, forming an echelon crack…
In this contribution, a variational diffuse modeling framework for cracks in heterogeneous media is presented. A static order parameter smoothly bridges the discontinuity at material interfaces, while an evolving phase-field captures the…
Recently proposed phase-field models offer self-consistent descriptions of brittle fracture. Here, we analyze these theories in the quasistatic regime of crack propagation. We show how to derive the laws of crack motion either by using…
We study the drift of suspended micro-particles in a viscous liquid pumped back and forth through a periodic lattice of pores (drift ratchet). In order to explain the particle drift observed in such an experiment, we present an…
The propagation path of quasistatic cracks under monotonic loading is known to be strongly influenced by the anisotropy of the fracture energy in crystalline solids or engineered materials with a regular microstructure. Such cracks…
We have studied the propagation of a crack front along the heterogeneous weak plane of a transparent poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) block using two different loading conditions: imposed constant velocity and creep relaxation. We have…
The dynamics of planar crack fronts in heterogeneous media is studied using a recently proposed stochastic equation of motion that takes into account nonlinear effects. The analysis is carried for a moving front in the quasi-static regime…
Understanding the role played by the microstructure of materials on their macroscopic failure properties is an important challenge in solid mechanics. Indeed, when a crack propagates at a heterogeneous brittle interface, the front is…
Various kinds of heterogeneity in solids including atomistic discreteness affect the fracture strength as well as the failure dynamics remarkably. Here we study the effects of an initial crack in a discrete model for fracture in…
While cracking is a complex dynamics that involves material intrinsic properties like grain shape and size distribution, elastic properties of grain and cementing materials, and extrinsic properties of loading, in this work, the focus has…
We argue that nucleation of brittle cracks in initially flawless soft elastic solids is preceded by a nonlinear elastic instability, which cannot be captured without accounting for geometrical precise description of finite elastic…
The phase-field approach to fracture has been proven to be a mathematically sound and easy to implement method for computing crack propagation with arbitrary crack paths. Hereby crack growth is driven by energy minimization resulting in a…
The growth dynamics of a single crack in a heterogeneous material under subcritical loading is an intermittent process; and many features of this dynamics have been shown to agree with simple models of thermally activated rupture. In order…
Fracture is a fundamental mechanism of materials failure. Propagating cracks can exhibit a rich dynamical behavior controlled by a subtle interplay between microscopic failure processes in the crack tip region and macroscopic elasticity. We…
We propose a minimal nonlinear model of brittle crack propagation by considering only the motion of the crack-tip atom. The model captures many essential features of steady-state crack velocity and is in excellent quantitative agreement…
We report a novel mode of oscillatory crack propagation when a cutting tip is driven through a thin brittle polymer film. The phenomenon is so robust that it can easily be reproduced at hand (using CD packaging material for example).…
We present experiments on the dynamic buckling and fragmentation of slender rods axially impacted by a projectile. By combining the results of Saint-Venant and elastic beam theory, we derive a preferred wavelength lambda for the buckling…
The shear wave speed is an upper limit for the speed of cracks loaded in tension in linear elastic solids. We have discovered that in a non-linear material, cracks in tension (Mode I) exceed this sound speed, and travel in an intersonic…
Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) provides a consistent framework to evaluate quantitatively the energy flux released to the tip of a growing crack. Still, the way in which the crack selects its velocity in response to this energy…
Branching random walks on multidimensional lattice with heavy tails and a constant branching rate are considered. It is shown that under these conditions (heavy tails and constant rate), the front propagates exponentially fast, but the…