Related papers: Material elasticity determines scaling behaviour o…
A bonded particle model is used to explore how variations in the material properties of brittle, isotropic solids affect critical behavior in fragmentation. To control material properties, a new model is proposed which includes breakable…
Through controlled numerical simulations in a one dimensional fiber bundle model with local stress concentration, we established an inverse correlation between the strength of the material and the cracks which grow inside it - both the…
For solving the longstanding materials science problem of correlating elastic properties of a solid material to the formation of cracks we present a new general concept. This concept is applied to the technologically most important cracks…
Cracks, the major vehicle for material failure, tend to accelerate to high velocities in brittle materials. In three-dimensions, cracks generically undergo a micro-branching instability at about 40% of their sonic limiting velocity. Recent…
Predicting when rupture occurs or cracks progress is a major challenge in numerous elds of industrial, societal and geophysical importance. It remains largely unsolved: Stress enhancement at cracks and defects, indeed, makes the macroscale…
Brittle materials fail catastrophically. In consequence of their limited flaw-tolerance, failure occurs by localized fracture and is typically a dynamic process. Recently, experiments on epithelial cell monolayers have revealed that this…
Stress enhancement in the vicinity of brittle cracks makes the macro-scale failure properties extremely sensitive to the micro-scale material disorder. Therefore: (i) Fracturing systems often display a jerky dynamics, so-called crackling…
Under compressive stress, rock ``damage'' in the form of tensile microcracks is coupled to internal slip on microscopic interfaces, such as preexisting cracks and grain boundaries. In order to characterise the contribution of slip to the…
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…
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…
The local and global dynamics of a sheared granular medium are studied in a model experiment as a function of several macroscopic parameters. We observe that by changing the shear rate or the loading stiffness, the system crackles, with…
Materials are often heterogeneous at various length scales, with variations in grain structure, defects, and composition which has a strong influence on the emergent macroscopic plastic behavior. In particular, heterogeneities lead to…
The dynamics of a crack propagating in an elastic inhomogeneous material is investigated. The variations of the average crack velocity with the external loading are measured for a brittle rock and are shown to display two distinct regimes:…
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…
Crack growth is the basic mechanism leading to the failure of brittle materials. Engineering addresses this problem within the framework of continuum mechanics, which links deterministically the crack motion to the applied loading. Such an…
The way granular materials response to an applied shear stress is of the utmost relevance to both human activities and natural environment. One of the their most intriguing and less understood behavior, is the stick-instability, whose most…
Cracks in soft materials exhibit diverse dynamic patterns, involving straight, oscillation, branching, and supershear fracture. Here, we successfully reproduce these crack morphologies in a two-dimensional pre-strained fracture scenario and…
We study experimentally the slow growth of a single crack in a fibrous material and observe stepwise growth dynamics. We model the material as a lattice where the crack is pinned by elastic traps and grows due to thermally activated stress…
Microcrystals deform very differently from their macroscopic counterparts, displaying a size-dependent yield stress and intermittent plastic strain bursts. Here we demonstrate that size effects and strain bursts may be just two different…
We investigate the weakening of elastic materials through randomly distributed circles and cracks numerically and compare the results to predictions from homogenization theories. We find a good agreement for the case of randomly oriented…