Related papers: Strain-stiffening elastomers fail from the edge
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…
Thick adhesive layers have potential structural application in ship construction for the joining of a composite superstructure to a steel hull. The purpose of this study is to develop a mechanics model for the adhesive fracture of such lap…
Cutting mechanics of soft solids is gaining rapid attention thanks to its promising benefits in material characterization and other applications. However, a full understanding of the physical phenomena is still missing, and several…
We have designed a new experimental setup able to investigate fracture of soft materials at small scales. At high crack velocity, where energy is mostly dissipated through viscoelastic processes, we observe an increasingly large high strain…
We present high resolution measurements of the displacement and strain fields near the tip of a dynamic (Mode I) crack. The experiments are performed on polyacrylamide gels, brittle elastomers whose fracture dynamics mirror those of typical…
Over the last half-century, linear viscoelastic models for crack growth in soft solids have flourished but their predictions have rarely been compared to experiments. In fact, most available models are either very approximate or cast in…
Cutting mechanics in soft solids have been a subject of study for several decades, an interest fuelled by the multitude of its applications, including material testing, manufacturing, and biomedical technology. Wire cutting is the simplest…
Mechanical reliability plays an outsized role in determining the durability of flexible electronic devices because of the significant mechanical stresses they can experience during manufacturing and operation. These devices are typically…
In this paper, a computational model in (2+1)-dimensions which simulates the rupture process of a fibrous material submitted to a constant force $F$, is analyzed. The roughness exponent $\zeta$ at the boundary that separates two failure…
We argue that nucleation of brittle cracks in initially flawless soft elastic solids is preceded by a nonlinear elastic instability, which cannot be captured without accounting for geometrical precise description of finite elastic…
In this review article we consider the crack growth resistance ofmicrometer and submicrometer sized samples from the fracture mechanics point of view. Standard fracture mechanics test procedures were developed for macroscale samples, and…
The shear response of soft solids can be modeled with linear elasticity, provided the forcing is slow and weak. Both of these approximations must break down when the material loses rigidity, such as in foams and emulsions at their…
We study how the loading rate, specimen geometry and microstructural texture select the dynamics of a crack moving through an heterogeneous elastic material in the quasi-static approximation. We find a transition, fully controlled by two…
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…
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…
This study investigated, experimentally and numerically, the fracturing behavior of thermoset polymer structures featuring cracks and sharp u-notches. It is shown that, even for cases in which the sharpness of the notch would suggest…
The dynamics of rapid brittle cracks is commonly studied in the framework of linear elastic fracture mechanics where nonlinearities are neglected. However, recent experimental and theoretical work demonstrated explicitly the importance of…
The fatigue fracture surfaces of a metallic alloy, and the stress corrosion fracture surfaces of glass are investigated as a function of crack velocity. It is shown that in both cases, there are two fracture regimes, which have a well…
Experimentally measuring the elastic properties of thin biological surfaces is non-trivial, particularly when they are curved. One technique that may be used is the indentation of a thin sheet of material by a rigid indenter, whilst…
Many new soft but tough rubbery materials have been recently discovered and new applications such as flexible prosthetics, stretchable electrodes or soft robotics continuously emerge. Yet, a credible multi-scale quantitative picture of…