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Architected materials can exhibit remarkable combinations of stiffness, strength, and toughness, yet their application is currently limited by an incomplete understanding of how cracks initiate and propagate through their discrete…
Understanding the role played by the microstructure of materials on their macroscopic failure properties is an important challenge in solid mechanics. Indeed, when a crack propagates at a heterogeneous brittle interface, the front is…
The growth dynamics of a single crack in a heterogeneous material under subcritical loading is an intermittent process; and many features of this dynamics have been shown to agree with simple models of thermally activated rupture. In order…
Fractures are a critical process in how materials wear, weaken, and fail whose unpredictable behavior can have dire consequences. While the behavior of smooth cracks in ideal materials is well understood, it is assumed that for real,…
Despite advances in manufacturing making metal functionally graded materials (FGMs) more common, numerical methods for predicting fracture in ductile functionally graded materials remain limited. In this work we study the crack propagation…
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…
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…
Various kinds of heterogeneity in solids including atomistic discreteness affect the fracture strength as well as the failure dynamics remarkably. Here we study the effects of an initial crack in a discrete model for fracture in…
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…
Fracture toughness is the material property characterizing resistance to failure. Predicting its value from the solid structure at the atomistic scale remains elusive, even in the simplest situations of brittle fracture. We report here…
Material failure is mediated by the propagation of cracks, which in realistic 3D materials typically involve multiple coexisting fracture planes. Multiple fracture-plane interactions create poorly understood out-of-plane crack structures,…
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…
The propagation of a 3D crack in an heterogeneous material is studied using a phase field model. It is shown that in the case of randomly distributed inclusions of soft material in a matrix, the nature of the distribution has little effect…
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…
We investigate fracture toughness of architected interfaces and their ability to maintain structural integrity and provide stable damage propagation conditions beyond the failure load. We propose theoretical and numerical frameworks to…
The properties of slow crack growth in brittle materials are analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. We propose a model based on a thermally activated rupture process. Considering a 2D spring network submitted to an external load…
Analytical models have been developed for fracture propagation over the last several decades and are now considered with renewed interest; the range of their applicability varies for different materials and different loading conditions.…
We consider the quasi-static propagation of a Mode III crack along the interface in a bimaterial plane containing a finite array of small line defects (microcracks and rigid line inclusions). The microdefects are arranged to form a channel…
The failure of mechanical metamaterials is a function of the interplay between the properties of the base material and the microstructural geometry. Stochastic failure properties of the base material and disordered microstructural…
Ever since the very first human-made knapped tools, the control of fracture propagation in brittle materials has been a vector of technological development. Nowadays, a broad range of applications relies on crack propagation control, from…