Related papers: How Material Heterogeneity Creates Rough Fractures
Steel is a key structural material because of its considerable strength and ductility. However, when exposed to hydrogen, it is prone to embrittlement. Mechanistic understanding of the origin of hydrogen embrittlement is hampered by the…
We model flow and transport in three-dimensional fracture networks with varying degrees of fracture-to-fracture aperture/permeability heterogeneity and network density to show how changes in these properties can cause the emergence of…
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…
Using an elastostatic description of crack growth based on the Griffith criterion and the principle of local symmetry, we present a stochastic model describing the propagation of a crack tip in a 2D heterogeneous brittle material. The model…
In spite of the apparent similarity of micro-branching instabilities in different brittle materials, we propose that the physics determining the typical length- and time-scales characterizing the post-instability patterns differ greatly…
This paper presents two main results. The first result indicates that in materials with broadly distributed microscopic heterogeneities, the fracture strength distribution corresponding to the peak load of the material response does not…
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…
Brittle fracturing of materials is common in natural and industrial processes over a variety of length scales. Knowledge of individual particle dynamics is vital to obtain deeper insight into the atomistic processes governing crack…
Rapid progress in additive manufacturing methods has created a new class of ultralight and strong architected metamaterials that resemble periodic truss structures. The mechanical performance of these metamaterials with a very large number…
The morphology of fracture surfaces encodes the various complex damage and fracture processes occurring at the microstructure scale that have lead to the failure of a given heterogeneous material. Understanding how to decipher this…
We derive here a linear elastic stochastic description for slow crack growth in heterogeneous materials. This approach succeeds in reproducing quantitatively the intermittent crackling dynamics observed recently during the slow propagation…
We study the genesis and the selective propagation of complex crack networks induced by thermal shock or drying of brittle materials. We use a quasi-static gradient damage model to perform large scale numerical simulations showing that the…
Mechanical metamaterials with engineered failure properties typically rely on periodic unit cell geometries or bespoke microstructures to achieve their unique properties. We demonstrate that intelligent use of disorder in metamaterials…
Slow crack growth in a model of homogenous brittle elastic material is described as a thermal activation process where stress fluctuations allow to overcome a breaking threshold through a series of irreversible steps. We study the case of a…
The fracture of highly deformable soft materials is of great practical importance in a wide range of technological applications, emerging in fields such as soft robotics, stretchable electronics and tissue engineering. From a basic physics…
The modeling of crack propagation in a heterogeneous material using a phase field model is studied numerically in a simple test case: the crack meets a wedge of higher fracture energy. It is shown that when the crack cannot enter the wedge,…
The relevant parameters at the microstructure scale that govern the macroscopic toughness of disordered brittle materials are investigated theoretically. We focus on planar crack propagation and describe the front evolution as the…
Dissolution in porous media and fractured rocks alters both the chemical composition of the fluid and the physical properties of the solid. Depending on system conditions, reactive flow may enlarge pores uniformly, widen pre-existing…
A heterogeneous brittle material characterized by a random field of local toughness Kc(x) can be represented by an equivalent homogeneous medium of toughness, Keff. Homogenization refers to a process of estimating Keff from the local field…
The paper addresses the problem of a Mode III interfacial crack advancing quasi-statically in a heterogeneous composite material, that is a two-phase material containing elastic inclusions, both soft and stiff, and defects, such as…