Related papers: Basal hydrofractures near sticky patches
Full thickness crevasses can transport water from the glacier surface to the bedrock where high water pressures can open kilometre-long cracks along the basal interface, which can accelerate glacier flow. We present a first computational…
There is a need for computational models capable of predicting meltwater-assisted crevasse growth in glacial ice. Mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets is the largest contributor to sea-level rise and iceberg calving due to hydrofracture…
We present an investigation into the response of a viscous fluid flowing over a sloped bed across a spatially finite patch of basal lubrication. We present a simple analytical model that captures the fundamental structure of such…
Fracture propagation is highly sensitive to the conditions at the crack tip. In heterogeneous materials, microscale obstacles can cause propagation instabilities. Macroscopic heterogeneities modify the stress field over scales larger than…
We describe a novel crystal growth instability that enhances the development of thin edges, promoting the formation of plate-like or hollow columnar morphologies. This instability arises when diffusion-limited growth is coupled with…
Turbulent flows over wavy surfaces give rise to the formation of ripples, dunes and other natural bedforms. To predict how much sediment these flows transport, research has focused mainly on basal shear stress, which peaks upstream of the…
Stability of coarse particles against gravity is an important issue in dense suspensions (fresh concrete, foodstuff, etc.). On the one hand, it is known that they are stable at rest when the interstitial paste has a high enough yield…
We demonstrate a novel shear-induced mechanism for growth of concentration fluctuations in a bacterial suspension. Using a linear stability analysis, a homogeneously sheared suspension is shown to support exponentially growing layering…
We study at the laboratory scale the rupture of thin floating sheets made of a brittle material under a wave-induced mechanical forcing. We show that the rupture occurs where the curvature is maximum and the break-up threshold strongly…
Shear rupture and fault slip in crystalline rocks like granite produce large dilation, impacting the spatiotemporal evolution of fluid pressure in the crust during the seismic cycle. To explore how fluid pressure variations are coupled to…
Shear cracks propagation is a basic dynamical process that mediates interfacial failure. We develop a general weakly nonlinear elastic theory of shear cracks and show that these experience tensile-mode crack tip deformation, including…
We present observations of the formation of plate-like snow crystals that provide evidence for an edge-enhancing crystal growth instability. This instability arises when the condensation coefficient describing the growth of an ice prism…
The properties of slow crack growth in brittle materials are analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. We propose a model based on a thermally activated rupture process. Considering a 2D spring network submitted to an external load…
When a less viscous Newtonian fluid displaces an aging aqueous clay suspension in a confined space, a rich array of interfacial patterns emerges due to a predominantly viscous instability. In the present work, we controlled the mechanical…
A planar crack generically segments into an array of "daughter cracks" shaped as tilted facets when loaded with both a tensile stress normal to the crack plane (mode I) and a shear stress parallel to the crack front (mode III). We…
A liquid droplet resting on a soft gel substrate can deform that substrate to the point of material failure, whereby fractures develop on the gel surface that propagate outwards from the contact-line in a starburst pattern. In this paper,…
When materials freeze, they often undergo damage due to ice growth. Although this damage is commonly ascribed to the volumetric expansion of water upon freezing, it is usually driven by suction of water towards growing ice crystals. The…
Drying of bacterial suspensions is frequently encountered in a plethora of natural and engineering processes. However, the evaporation-driven mechanical instabilities of dense consolidating bacterial suspensions have not been explored…
The ubiquitous appearance of regions of localized deformation (shear bands) in different kinds of disordered materials under shear is studied in the context of a mesoscopic model of plasticity. The model may or may not include relaxational…
Ice streams are bands of fast-flowing ice in ice sheets. We investigate their formation as an example of spontaneous pattern formation, based on positive feedbacks between dissipation and basal sliding. Our focus is on temperature-dependent…