Related papers: Microstructural features governing fracture of a t…
Amorphous grain boundary complexions act as toughening features within a microstructure because they can absorb dislocations more efficiently than traditional grain boundaries. This toughening effect should be a strong function of the local…
Large deformations of soft materials are customarily associated with strong constitutive and geometrical nonlinearities that originate new modes of fracture. Some isotropic materials can develop strong fracture anisotropy, which manifests…
This paper studies the competition of fracture initiation in the ductile soft phase and in the comparatively brittle hard phase in the microstructure of a two-phase material. A simple microstructural model is used to predict macroscopic…
While cracks in isotropic homogeneous materials propagate straight, perpendicularly to the tensile axis, cracks in natural and synthetic composites deflect from a straight path, often increasing the toughness of the material. Here we…
Modeling the propagation of cracks at the microscopic level is fundamental to understand the effect of the microstructure on the fracture process. Nevertheless, microscopic propagation is often unstable and when using phase field fracture…
A phase-field model is used to capture the surfactant-driven formation of fracture patterns in particulate monolayers. The model is intended for the regime of closely-packed systems in which the mechanical response of the monolayer can be…
Understanding the evolution of dislocation structures during plastic deformation is critical for predicting the mechanical performance of metallic materials. In this work, we applied in situ scanning electron microscopy/electron backscatter…
This work presents a variational physics-informed deep learning framework for phase-field modelling of brittle crack propagation in anisotropic media. Previous Deep Ritz Method (DRM) approaches have focused on second-order, isotropic…
We investigate the role of microstructural bridging on the fracture toughness of composite materials. To achieve this, a new computational framework is presented that integrates phase field fracture and cohesive zone models to simulate…
Amorphous silica ($a-SiO_2$) is a widely used inorganic material. Interestingly, the relationship between the local atomic structures of $a-SiO_2$ and their effects on ductility and fracture is seldom explored. Here, we combine large-scale…
We study a theoretical model of mud cracks, that is, the fracture patterns resulting from the contraction with drying in a thin layer of a mixture of granules and water. In this model, we consider the slip on the bottom of this layer and…
Discrete element modelling (DEM) is one of the most efficient computational approaches to the fracture processes of heterogeneous materials on mesoscopic scales. From the dynamics of single crack propagation through the statistics of crack…
Plastic deformation of micron-scale crystalline solids exhibits stress-strain curves with significant sample-to-sample variations. It is a pertinent question if this variability is purely random or to some extent predictable. Here we show,…
This paper investigates the optimization of 2D and 3D composite structures using machine learning (ML) techniques, focusing on fracture toughness and crack propagation in the Double Cantilever Beam (DCB) test. By exploring the intricate…
A particular failure mode of highly porous brittle materials consists in the propagation of cracks under uniaxial compressive loads. Such 'anticracks' have been observed in a range of materials, from snow and porous sandstone to brittle…
The presence and evolution of defects that appear in the manufacturing process play a vital role in the failure mechanisms of engineering materials. In particular, the collective behavior of dislocation dynamics at the mesoscale leads to…
Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) provides a consistent framework to evaluate quantitatively the energy flux released to the tip of a growing crack. Still, the way in which the crack selects its velocity in response to this energy…
A continuum model of crack propagation is presented and discussed. We obtain steady state solutions with a self-consistently selected propagation velocity and shape of the crack, provided that elastodynamic and viscoelastic effects are…
The presence of interfaces and grain boundaries significantly impacts the mechanical properties of materials, particularly when dealing with micro- or nano-scale samples. Distinct interactions between dislocations and grain boundaries can…
We introduce a model for the dynamics of mud cracking in the limit of of extremely thin layers. In this model the growth of fracture proceeds by selecting the part of the material with the smallest (quenched) breaking threshold. In…