Related papers: The trousers fracture test for viscoelastic elasto…
Theoretical analyses and experiments have been carried out to investigate fracture behavior of glassy polymers. Our birefringence measurements quantify the local stress buildup at cut tip during different stages of drawing. Based on…
Recently, the phase field method has been increasingly used for brittle fractures in soft materials like polymers, elastomers, and biological tissues. When considering finite deformations to account for the highly deformable nature of soft…
We show that the Persson-Brener theory of crack propagation in viscoelastic solids gives a viscoelastic fracture energy factor $G/G_0 = 1+f$ which is nearly the same as the viscoelastic factor obtained using the cohesive-zone model. We also…
We study a class of models for brittle fracture: elastic theory models which allow for cracks but not for plastic flow. We show that these models exhibit, at all finite temperatures, a transition to fracture under applied load similar to…
Understanding the fracture mechanics of soft solids remains a fundamental challenge due to their complex, nonlinear responses under large deformations. While multiaxial loading is key to probing their mechanical behavior, the role of such…
Important physical observations in rupture dynamics such as static fault friction, short-slip, self-healing, and supershear phenomenon in cracks are studied. A continuum model of rupture dynamics is developed using the field dislocation…
Recent step strain experiments in well-entangled polymeric liquids demonstrated a bulk fracture-like phenomenon. We have studied this instability using a modern version of the Doi-Edwards theory for entangled polymers, and we find close…
We investigate crack propagation in a simple two-dimensional visco-elastic model and find a scaling regime in the relation between the propagation velocity and energy release rate or fracture energy, together with lower and upper bounds of…
The nucleation and/or growth of cracks in elastic-brittle solids has been recently described in [14] in terms of a special class of measures and with a variational technique requiring the minimization of a certain energy over classes of…
Elastomers are used in a wide range of applications because of their large strain to failure, low density, and tailorable stiffness and toughness. The mechanical behavior of elastomers derives mainly from the entropic elasticity of the…
The model of Zhao and Suo can be readily generalized to predict the critical breakdown electric field $E_c$ value of elastomers with arbitrary elastic strain energy function. An explicit expression for $E_c$ is presented for elastomeric…
We investigate the quasi-static growth of elastic fibers in the presence of dry or viscous friction. An unusual form of destabilization beyond a critical length is described. In order to characterize this phenomenon, a new definition of…
Design of large composite structures requires understanding the scaling of their mechanical properties, an aspect often overlooked in the literature on composites. This contribution analyzes, experimentally and numerically, the…
We study the effects realistic fracture criteria have on crack morphology obtained in numerical simulations with a stochastic discrete element method. Results are obtained with two criteria which are consistent with the theory of elasticity…
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…
We provide a clear energetic insight into the catastrophic nature of the so-called creasing and pull-in instabilities in soft electro-active elastomers. These phenomena are ubiquitous for thin electro-elastic plates and are a major obstacle…
We address analytically and numerically the problem of crack path prediction in the model system of a crack propagating under thermal loading. We show that one can explain the instability from a straight to a wavy crack propagation by using…
The breaking rate of an atomic chain stretched at zero temperature by a constant force can be calculated in a quasiclassical approximation by finding the localized solutions ("bounces") of the equations of classical dynamics in imaginary…
Nearly three decades ago, the field of mechanics was cautioned of the obscure nature of cavitation processes in soft materials [Gent, A.N., 1990. Cavitation in rubber: a cautionary tale. Rubber Chemistry and Technology, 63(3)]. Since then,…
Since their initial standardizations in the 1930s and 1950s, the so-called four-point and three-point bending tests on unnotched beams have been embraced by practitioners as two popular methods to indirectly measure the tensile strength of…