Related papers: Fracture of silicate glasses: Micro-cavities and c…
Understanding, predicting and eventually improving the resistance to fracture of silicate materials is of primary importance to design new glasses that would be tougher, while retaining their transparency. However, the atomic mechanism of…
The existence of nanoscale ductility during the fracture of silicate glasses remains controversial. Here, based on molecular dynamics simulations coupled with topological constraint theory, we show that nano-ductility arises from the…
We report in situ Atomic Force Microscopy experiments which reveal the presence of nanoscale damage cavities ahead of a stress-corrosion crack tip in glass. Their presence might explain the departure from linear elasticity observed in the…
The fracture energy of brittle materials rises with crack velocity, and this effect is typically attributed to surface roughening from path instabilities. Here we show, using molecular dynamics simulations of silica glass with a…
We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force (AFM) microscopy…
The strengths of glasses are intricately linked to their atomic-level heterogeneity. Atomistic simulations are frequently used to investigate the statistical physics of this relationship, compensating for the limited spatiotemporal…
We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force microscopy (AFM)…
Fractoluminescence experiments are performed on two kinds of silicate glasses. All the light spectra collected during dynamic fracture reveal a black body radiator behaviour, which is interpreted as a crack velocity-dependent temperature…
We compare the ability of various interaction potentials to predict the structural and mechanical properties of silica and sodium silicate glasses. While most structural quantities show a relatively mild dependence on the potential used,…
We studied a set of float glass samples prepared with different fictive temperature by previous annealing around the glass transition temperature. We compared the results to previous measurements on a series of amorphous silica samples,…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we investigate the dependence of the structural and vibrational properties of the surfaces of sodo-silicate glasses on the sodium content as well as the nature of the surface. Two types of glass surfaces…
The presence of universality of avalanches characterizing the inelastic response of disordered materials has the potential to bridge the gap from micro- to macroscale. In this study, we explore the statistics and the scaling behavior of…
We use \textit{ab initio} molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the properties of the dry surface of pure silica and sodium silicate glasses. The surface layers are defined based on the atomic distributions along the direction…
We report here atomic force microscopy experiments designed to uncover the nature of failure mechanisms occuring within the process zone at the tip of a crack propagating into a silica glass specimen under stress corrosion. The crack…
The difference between free surface energy and fracture toughness in amorphous silica is studied via multi-scale simulations. We combine the homogenization of a molecular dynamics fracture model with a phase-field approach to track and…
Fracture toughness is a critical mechanical property of glasses, but a detailed understanding of its link to composition and structure is still missing. Here, focusing on the industrially important family of calcium aluminosilicate glasses,…
In order to design tougher materials, it is crucial to understand the relationship between their composition and their resistance to fracture. To this end, we investigate the fracture toughness of usual sodium silicate glasses (NS) and…
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…
The practical strength of oxide glasses is greatly reduced by surface flaws that form during processing and use. Instrumented indentation can mimic such real-life damage events and induce flaws and cracking under controlled conditions. At…
Indentation has been widely used for investigating the mechanical behavior of glasses. However, how the various microscopic properties (such as atomic structure and mechanics) of glass evolve from the immediate contact with the indenter to…