Related papers: Less is more: removing a single bond increases the…
Disordered spring networks are a well-established model system to study fracture in a wide range of materials, from ceramics to polymer networks and mechanical metamaterials, across length scales from the atomistic to the macroscopic. A…
We study the influence of thermal fluctuations on the fracture of elastic networks, via simulations of the uniaxial extension of central-force spring networks with varying rigidity, i.e. connectivity. Studying their failure response, both…
The mechanics of single-chain stretching and rupture are central to understanding the resilience of biological polymers and designing strong and tough soft materials such as double-network gels and multi-network elastomers. In this work, we…
We explore the range over which the elasticity of disordered spring networks can be manipulated by the removal of selected bonds. By taking into account the local response of a bond, we demonstrate that the effectiveness of pruning can be…
The failure of frictional interfaces -- the process of frictional rupture -- is widely assumed to feature crack-like properties, with far-reaching implications for various disciplines, ranging from engineering tribology to earthquake…
Experiments have long shown that a polymer network of covalent bonds commonly ruptures at a stress that is orders of magnitude lower than the strength of the covalent bonds. Here we investigate this large reduction in strength by…
Entanglement of polymer chains is ubiquitous in elastomers, gels, and biological tissues. While the effects of chain entanglement on elasticity and viscoelasticity of polymer networks have been intensively studied, it remains elusive how…
It is widely known that hydrogels, a class of soft materials made of a polymer chain network, are prone to fatigue failure. To understand the underlying mechanism, here we simulate polymer scission and fatigue initiation in the vicinity of…
We study experimentally the fracture mechanisms of a model cohesive granular medium consisting of glass beads held together by solidified polymer bridges. The elastic response of this material can be controlled by changing the cross-linking…
Fracture in a disordered lattice system is studied. In our system, particles are initially arranged on the triangular lattice and each nearest-neighbor pair is connected with a randomly chosen soft or hard Hookean spring. Every spring has…
Multi-phase materials, such as composite materials, exhibit multiple competing failure mechanisms during the growth of a macroscopic defect. For the simulation of the overall fracture process in such materials, we develop a two-phase spring…
Based on a recent simulation study [Masubuchi et al., Macromolecules, 56, 9359 (2023)], the cycle rank plays a significant role in determining the fracture characteristics of network polymers. However, the study only considered…
We consider the rupture dynamics of a homopolymer chain pulled at one end at a constant loading rate r. Compared to single bond breaking, the existence of the chain introduces two new aspects into rupture dynamics: the non-Markovian aspect…
We study the robustness of complex networks subject to edge removal. Several network models and removing strategies are simulated. Rather than the existence of the giant component, we use total connectedness as the criterion of breakdown.…
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…
To clarify effects of crack speed and cross-link density on fracture energy of acrylamide gels, we evaluated the roughness of the fracture surface and measured the fracture energy taking into account the roughness. The fracture energy…
Particular aspects of problems ranging from dielectric breakdown to metal insu- lator transition can be studied using electrical o elastic networks. We present an expression for the mean breakdown strength of such networks.First, we intro-…
A random fuse network, or equivalently a two-dimensional spring network with quenched disorder, is subjected to a constant load and thermal noise, and studied by means of numerical simulations. Rupture is thermally activated and the…
By performing extensive simulations with unprecedentedly large system sizes, we unveil how rigidity influences the fracture of disordered materials. We observe the largest damage in networks with connectivity close to the isostatic point…
A polymer network fractures by breaking covalent bonds, but the experimentally measured strength of the polymer network is orders of magnitude lower than the strength of covalent bonds. We investigate the effect of statistical variation of…