Related papers: A New Criterion for Crack Formation in Disordered …
Hydrated granular packings often crack into discrete clusters of grains when dried. Despite its ubiquity, accurate prediction of cracking remains elusive. Here, we elucidate the previously overlooked role of individual grain shrinkage---a…
Recent advances in classical density functional theory are combined with stochastic process theory and rare event techniques to formulate a theoretical description of nucleation, including crystallization, that can predict nonclassical…
When a colloidal gel dries through evaporation, cracks are usually formed, which often reveal underlying processes at work during desiccation. Desiccating colloid droplets of few hundred $\mu l$ size show interesting effects of pattern…
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…
We address analytically and numerically the problem of crack path prediction in the model system of a crack propagating under thermal loading. We show that one can explain the instability from a straight to a wavy crack propagation by using…
We address the role of the nature of material disorder in determining the roughness of cracks which grow by damage nucleation and coalescence ahead of the crack tip. We highlight the role of quenched and annealed disorders in relation 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…
The properties of crystals consisting of several components can be widely tuned. Often solid solutions are produced, where substitutional or interstitional disorder determines the crystal thermodynamic and mechanical properties. The…
We show how deeply quenching a liquid to temperatures where it is linearly unstable and the crystal is the equilibrium phase often produces crystalline structures with defects and disorder. As the solid phase advances into the liquid phase,…
The fracture mechanics was widely employed to explain the crack propagation in the deposition produced by drying colloidal suspension. However, more complex than conventional fracture, those cracks periodically distribute and make up a…
A dynamic crack will travel in a straight path up to a material-dependent critical speed beyond which its path becomes erratic. Predicting this critical speed and discovering the origin of this instability are two outstanding problems in…
The breaking rate of an atomic chain stretched at zero temperature by a constant force can be calculated in a quasiclassical approximation by finding the localized solutions ("bounces") of the equations of classical dynamics in imaginary…
For over 25 years it is known that the roll structure of electroconvection (EC) in the dielectric regime in planarly aligned nematic liquid crystals has, after a transition to defect chaos, the tendency to form chevron structures. We show,…
Fracture in quasi-statically driven systems is studied by means of a discrete spring-block model. Developed from close comparison with desiccation experiments, it describes crack formation induced by friction on a substrate. The model…
This paper describes an attempt to construct a first-principles theory of the fracture toughness of crystalline solids. It is based on the thermodynamic dislocation theory (TDT), which starts with the assertion that dislocations in solids…
A prototype statistical model for the etching of a random solid is investigated in order to assess the influence of disorder and temperature on the dissolution kinetics. At low temperature, the kinetics is dominated by percolation…
Disordered hyperuniform systems are exotic states of matter that completely suppress large-scale density fluctuations like crystals, and yet possess no Bragg peaks similar to liquids or glasses. Such systems have been discovered in a…
We investigate experimentally the quenching of a liquid pancake, obtained through the impact of a water drop on a cold solid substrate ($0$ to $-60^\circ$C). We show that, below a certain substrate temperature, fractures appear on the…
The damage and fracture of materials are technologically of enormous interest due to their economic and human cost. They cover a wide range of phenomena like e.g. cracking of glass, aging of concrete, the failure of fiber networks in the…
A neutron star is born as a hot, lepton-rich protoneutron star (PNS) and cools via neutrino emission, eventually allowing heavy ions in the outer layers to crystallize into a solid crust. We develop a simple analytic estimate for the onset…