Related papers: How hidden 3D structure within crack fronts reveal…
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…
This paper presents a formulation for brittle fracture in 3D elastic solids within the context of configurational mechanics. The local form of the first law of thermodynamics provides a condition for equilibrium of the crack front. The…
When a crack interacts with material heterogeneities, its front distorts and adopts complex tortuous configurations that are reminiscent of the energy barriers encountered during crack propagation. As such, the study of crack front…
Patterns on broken surfaces are well-known from everyday experience, but surprisingly, how and why they form are very much open questions. Well-defined facets are commonly observed1-4 along fracture surfaces which are created by slow…
Statistics and thermally activated dynamics of crack nucleation and propagation in a two-dimensional heterogeneous material containing quenched randomly distributed defects are studied theoretically. Using the generalized Griffith criterion…
The failure of frictional interfaces -- the process of frictional rupture -- is widely assumed to feature crack-like properties, with far-reaching implications for various disciplines, ranging from engineering tribology to earthquake…
In earlier papers (Leblond et.al., 2011, 2019), we presented linear stability analyses of the coplanar propagation of a crack loaded in mixed-mode I+III, based on a "double'' propagation criterion combining Griffith (1920)'s energetic…
We approach the problem of heterogeneous dynamic fracture by considering spatiotemporal perturbations to planar crack fronts. Front propagation is governed by local energy balance between the elastic energy per unit area available to…
Rock formations are very often characterized by the presence of fractures that have grown subcritically over geological time scales and under evolving stress fields. In mechanically layered systems, such fractures can either become…
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…
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…
The interaction of crack fronts with asperities is central to the criteria of fracture in heterogeneous materials and for predicting fracture surface formation. It is known how dynamic crack fronts respond to small, 1st-order,…
In a previous paper (Leblond et al., 2011), we proposed a theoretical interpretation of the experimentally well known instability of coplanar crack propagation in mode I+III. The interpretation relied on a stability analysis based on…
The propagation of an interfacial crack front through a weak plane of a transparent Plexiglas block has been studied experimentally. A stable crack in mode I was generated by loading the system by an imposed displacement. The local…
In this paper we provide necessary and sufficient conditions in order to guarantee the energy-dissipation balance of a Mode III crack, growing on a prescribed smooth path. Moreover, we characterize the singularity of the displacement near…
We detail the energy balance of a propagating hydraulic fracture. Using the linear hydraulic fracture model which combines lubrication flow and linear elastic fracture mechanics, we demonstrate how different propagation regimes are related…
A variational discrete element method is applied to simulate quasi-static crack propagation. Cracks are considered to propagate between the mesh cells through the mesh facets. The elastic behaviour is parametrized by the continuous…
Material failure is mediated by the propagation of cracks, which in realistic 3D materials typically involve multiple coexisting fracture planes. Multiple fracture-plane interactions create poorly understood out-of-plane crack structures,…
This paper presents a computational framework for quasi-static brittle fracture in three dimensional solids. The paper set outs the theoretical basis for determining the initiation and direction of propagating cracks based on the concept of…
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…