Related papers: Glass breaks like metals, but at the nanometer sca…
We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force microscopy (AFM)…
We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force (AFM) microscopy…
We use large-scale simulations to investigate the dynamic fracture of silica and sodium-silicate glasses under uniaxial tension. The stress-strain curves demonstrate that silica glass is brittle whereas the glasses rich in Na show…
We report here atomic force microscopy experiments designed to uncover the nature of failure mechanisms occuring within the process zone at the tip of a crack propagating into a silica glass specimen under stress corrosion. The crack…
Understanding, predicting and eventually improving the resistance to fracture of silicate materials is of primary importance to design new glasses that would be tougher, while retaining their transparency. However, the atomic mechanism of…
Quantitative understanding of the fracture toughness of metallic glasses, including the associated ductile-to-brittle transitions, is not yet available. Here we use a simple model of plastic deformation in glasses, coupled to an advanced…
Experimentally resolving atomic-scale structural changes of a deformed glass remains challenging owing to the disordered nature of glass structure. Here, we show that the structural anisotropy emerges as a general hallmark for different…
We perform fracture experiments on nanoscale phase separated glasses and measure crack surface roughness by atomic force microscopy. The ability of tuning the phase domain size by thermal treatment allows us to test thoroughly the…
The fracture energy of brittle materials rises with crack velocity, and this effect is typically attributed to surface roughening from path instabilities. Here we show, using molecular dynamics simulations of silica glass with a…
The strengths of glasses are intricately linked to their atomic-level heterogeneity. Atomistic simulations are frequently used to investigate the statistical physics of this relationship, compensating for the limited spatiotemporal…
We report nano-scale mechanical heterogeneity of a metallic glass characterized by dynamic atomic force microscopy. Apparent energy dissipation with the variation of ~12%, originating from non-uniform distribution of local viscoelasticity,…
Understanding the mechanical properties of glasses remains elusive since the glass transition itself is not fully understood, even in well studied examples of glass formers in two dimensions. In this context we demonstrate here: (i) a…
The existence of nanoscale ductility during the fracture of silicate glasses remains controversial. Here, based on molecular dynamics simulations coupled with topological constraint theory, we show that nano-ductility arises from the…
Amorphous solids, confined on the nano-scale, exhibit a wealth of novel phenomena yet to be explored. In particular, the response of such solids to a mechanical load is not well understood and, as has been demonstrated experimentally, it…
The difference between free surface energy and fracture toughness in amorphous silica is studied via multi-scale simulations. We combine the homogenization of a molecular dynamics fracture model with a phase-field approach to track and…
The lifetime and performance of any engineering component, from nanoscale sensors to macroscopic structures, are strongly influenced by fracture processes. Fracture itself is a highly localized event; originating at the atomic scale by bond…
Understanding the fracture toughness (resistance) of glasses is a fundamental problem of prime theoretical and practical importance. Here we theoretically study its dependence on the loading rate, the age (history) of the glass and the…
Tribological properties of materials play an important role in engineering applications. Up to now, a number of experimental studies have identified correlations between tribological parameters and the mechanical response. Using molecular…
Materials deform elasto-plastically and fail under various loading conditions, typically quantified by the stress triaxiality, which is the ratio between the dilatational (hydrostatic) stress and the deviatoric (shear-like) one. We show…
An original setup combining a very stable loading stage, an atomic force microscope and an environmental chamber, allows to obtain very stable sub-critical fracture propagation in oxide glasses under controlled environment, and subsequently…