Related papers: On maturation of crack patterns
Although the pattern formation on polymer gels has been considered as a result of the mechanical instability due to the volume phase transition, we found a macroscopic surface pattern formation not caused by the mechanical instability. It…
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…
A recent model showed how a clay shrinkage curve is step-by-step transformed into the shrinkage curve of an aggregated soil at any clay content if it is measured on samples so small that cracks do not occur at shrinkage. Such a shrinkage…
Due to their microstructure, quasi brittle materials present rough cracks. Under sliding of the crack lips, this roughness involves in one hand induced opening and in the other hand some apparent plasticity which is due to the interlocking…
A polycrystalline solid is modelled as an ensemble of random irregular polyhedra filling the entire space occupied by the solid body, leaving no voids or flaws between them. Adjacent grains can slide with a relative velocity proportional to…
If carbon fibre layers are prevented from slipping over one another as they consolidate onto a non-trivial geometry, they can be particularly susceptible to wrinkling/buckling instabilities. A one dimensional model for wrinkling during…
Motivated by recent experiments, we present a study of the dynamics of cracks in thin sheets. While the equations of elasticity for thin plates are well known, there remains the question of path selection for a propagating crack. We invoke…
The relevant parameters at the microstructure scale that govern the macroscopic toughness of disordered brittle materials are investigated theoretically. We focus on planar crack propagation and describe the front evolution as the…
We study pattern selection of cracks in directionally drying fractures by analyzing the experimental systems recently devised by C. Allain and L. Limat. [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 74}, 2981 (1995).] Proposing a simple picture of crack…
We study experimentally the slow growth of a single crack in polycarbonate films submitted to uniaxial and constant imposed stress. The specificity of fracture in polycarbonate films is the appearance of flame shaped macroscopic process…
Thin layers of elastomers bonded to two rigid plates demonstrate unusual failure response. Historically, it has been believed that strongly-bonded layers fail by two distinct mechanisms: (i) internal/external penny-shaped crack nucleation…
Pollen grains are known for their impressive variety of species-specific, microscale surface patterning. Despite having similar biological developmental steps, pollen grain surface features are remarkably geometrically varied. Previous work…
The sliding motion of objects is typically governed by their friction with the underlying surface. Compared to translational friction, however, rotational friction has received much less attention. Here, we experimentally and theoretically…
In both nature and engineering, loosely packed granular materials are often compacted inside confined geometries. Here, we explore such behaviour in a quasi-two dimensional geometry, where parallel rigid walls provide the confinement. We…
Recent observations of the growth of protein crystals have identified two different growth regimes. At low supersaturation, the surface of the crystal is smooth and increasing in size due to the nucleation of steps at defects and the…
Clusters formed by fluctuations of two-dimensional (2D) directed interfaces around a threshold level have been extensively studied at equilibrium and in nonequilibrium steady states, but their coarsening dynamics remain poorly understood.…
We investigate through computational simulations with a pore network model the formation of patterns caused by erosion-deposition mechanisms. In this model, the geometry of the pore space changes dynamically as a consequence of the coupling…
We used nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations to study the shear deformation of metallic composites composed of alternating layers of Cu and Au. Our simulations reveal the formation of "vortices" or "swirls" if the bimaterial…
The local and global dynamics of a sheared granular medium are studied in a model experiment as a function of several macroscopic parameters. We observe that by changing the shear rate or the loading stiffness, the system crackles, with…
Predicting potential risks associated with the fatigue of key structural components is crucial in engineering design. However, fatigue often involves entangled complexities of material microstructures and service conditions, making…