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We present a continuum model for the propagation of cracks and fractures in brittle materials. The components of the strain tensor $\epsilon$ are the fundamental variables. The evolution equations are based on a free energy that reduces to…
A decrease of fracture toughness of irradiated materials is usually observed, as reported for austenitic stainless steels in Light Water Reactors (LWRs) or copper alloys for fusion applications. For a wide range of applications (e.g.…
The fracture and severing of polymer chains plays a critical role in the failure of fibrous materials and the regulated turnover of intracellular filaments. Using continuum wormlike chain models, we investigate the fracture of semiflexible…
An adequate control of cell response in tissue engineering applications is of utmost importance to obtain products suitable to clinical practice. This paper is the first part of a series of two connected publications in which we study via…
Two approaches to incorporate heterogeneity in discrete models are compared. In the first, standard approach, the heterogeneity is dictated by geometrical structure of the discrete system. In the second approach, the heterogeneity is…
We study fluid-induced deformation and fracture of cohesive granular media, and apply photoporomechanics to uncover the underpinning grain-scale mechanics. We fabricate photoelastic spherical particles of diameter d=2mm, and make a…
A novel regularized fracture model for crack propagation in porous media is proposed. Our model is obtained through homogenization theory and formal asymptotic expansions. We start with a regularized quasi-static fracture model posed in a…
In this work a novel methodology for fracture toughness characterization by means of the small punch test (SPT) is presented. Notched specimens are employed and fracture resistance is assessed through a critical value of the notch mouth…
In this paper, we present a 2D numerical model developed to simulate the dynamics of soft, deformable particles. To accommodate significant particle deformations, the particle surface is represented as a narrow shell composed of mass points…
Dynamics simulation with frictional contacts is important for a wide range of applications, from cloth simulation to object manipulation. Recent methods using smoothed lagged friction forces have enabled robust and differentiable simulation…
We perform a novel analysis of the granular texture of a granular bed close to stability limit. Our analysis is based on a unique criterion of friction mobilisation in a simulated two-dimensional packing. In this way, we recover the bimodal…
The complex fluidic nature of blood, though necessary to serve different physiological purposes, gives rise to daunting challenges in developing unified conceptual paradigm describing the underlying physics of blood at pinch, which may…
We propose a predictive model for the mechanical behavior of biodegradable polymers of interest for biomedical applications. Starting from a detailed description of the network behavior of the copolymer material, taking care of bonds…
Induced by proteins within the cell membrane or by differential growth, heating, or swelling, spontaneous curvatures can drastically affect the morphology of thin bodies and induce mechanical instabilities. Yet, the interaction of…
The accurate measurement of fracture resistance in elastomers is essential for predicting the mechanical limits of soft devices. Usually, this is achieved by performing tearing or peeling experiments on thin-sheet samples. Here, we show…
The structure of random sphere packings in mechanical equilibrium in prescribed stress states, as studied by molecular dynamics simulations, strongly depends on the assembling procedure. Frictionless packings in the limit of low pressure…
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…
The modeling of high velocity impact into brittle or quasibrittle solids is hampered by the unavailability of a constitutive model capturing the effects of material comminution into very fine particles. The present objective is to develop…
Understanding failure in nanomaterials is critical for the design of reliable structural materials and small-scale devices that have components or microstructural elements at the nanometer length scale. No consensus exists on the effect of…
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…