Related papers: Discrepancy between sub-critical and fast rupture …
The phenomenon of arrest of an unstably-growing crack due to a curved weak interface is investigated. The weak interface can produce the deviation of the crack path, trapping the crack at the interface, leading to stable crack growth for…
We review the present state of understanding of solid friction at low velocities and for systems with negligibly small wear effects. We first analyze in detail the behavior of friction at interfaces between wacroscopic hard rough solids,…
The dynamics and stability of brittle cracks are not yet fully understood. Here we use the Willis-Movchan 3D linear perturbation formalism [J. Mech. Phys. Solids {\bf 45}, 591 (1997)] to study the out-of-plane stability of planar crack…
The morphology of fracture surfaces encodes the various complex damage and fracture processes occurring at the microstructure scale that have lead to the failure of a given heterogeneous material. Understanding how to decipher this…
Various kinds of heterogeneity in solids including atomistic discreteness affect the fracture strength as well as the failure dynamics remarkably. Here we study the effects of an initial crack in a discrete model for fracture in…
We present a subcritical fracture growth model, coupled with the elastic redistribution of the acting mechanical stress along rugous rupture fronts. We show the ability of this model to quantitatively reproduce the intermittent dynamics of…
Grain boundary roughness can affect electronic and mechanical properties of two-dimensional materials. This roughness depends crucially on the growth process by which the two-dimensional material is formed. To investigate the key mechanisms…
When fast cracks become unstable to microscopic branching (micro-branching), fracture no longer occurs in an effective 2D medium. We follow in-plane crack front dynamics via real-time measurements in brittle gels as micro-branching unfolds…
The slow motion of a crack line is studied via an experiment in which sheets of paper are split into two halves in a ``peel-in-nip'' (PIN) geometry under a constant load, in creep. The velocity-force relation is exponential. The dynamics of…
In nature and experiments, a large variety of rupture speeds and front modes along frictional interfaces are observed. Here, we introduce a minimal model for the rupture of homogeneously loaded interfaces with velocity strengthening dynamic…
The analogy between frictional cracks, propagating along interfaces in frictional contact, and ordinary cracks in bulk materials is important in various fields. We consider a stress-controlled frictional crack propagating at a velocity…
We discuss crack propagation along the interface between two dissimilar materials. The crack edge separates two states of the interface, ``stick'' and ``slip''. In the slip region we assume that the shear stress is proportional to the…
Statistics and thermally activated dynamics of crack nucleation and propagation in a two-dimensional heterogeneous material containing quenched randomly distributed defects are studied theoretically. Using the generalized Griffith criterion…
When branching is suppressed, rapid cracks undergo a dynamic instability from a straight to an oscillatory path at a critical velocity $v_c$. In a systematic experimental study using a wide range of different brittle materials, we first…
The classical problem of foam film rupture dynamics has been investigated when surfaces exhibit very high rigidity due to the presence of specific surfactants. Two new features are reported. First a strong deviation to the well-known…
Upon radial liquid sheet expansion, a bounding rim forms, with a thickness and stability governed, in part, by the liquid influx from the unsteady connected sheet. We examine how the thickness and fragmentation of such a radially expanding…
Rock formations are very often characterized by the presence of fractures that have grown subcritically over geological time scales and under evolving stress fields. In mechanically layered systems, such fractures can either become…
The roughness of the subduction interface is thought to influence seismogenic behavior in subduction zones, but a detailed understanding of how such roughness affects the state of stress along the subduction megathrust is still debated.…
Slow crack growth in a model of homogenous brittle elastic material is described as a thermal activation process where stress fluctuations allow to overcome a breaking threshold through a series of irreversible steps. We study the case of a…
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)…