Related papers: Pattern selection of cracks in directionally dryin…
We study the appearance and evolution of an array of parallel cracks in a thin slab of material that is directionally dried, and show that the cracks penetrate the material uniformly if the drying front is sufficiently sharp. We also show…
Straight cracks are observed in thin coatings under residual tensile stress, resulting into the classical network pattern observed in china crockery, old paintings or dry mud. Here, we present a novel fracture mechanism where delamination…
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…
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…
We investigate the formation of spiral crack patterns during the desiccation of thin layers of precipitates in contact with a substrate. This symmetry-breaking fracturing mode is found to arise naturally not from torsion forces, but from a…
We have studied shrinkage crack patterns which form when a thin layer of an alumina/water slurry dries. Both isotropic and directional drying were studied. The dynamics of the pattern formation process and the geometric properties of the…
When a thin film moderately adherent to a substrate is subjected to residual stress, the cooperation between fracture and delamination leads to unusual fracture patterns, such as spirals, alleys of crescents and various types of strips, all…
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…
We study a theoretical model of mud cracks, that is, the fracture patterns resulting from the contraction with drying in a thin layer of a mixture of granules and water. In this model, we consider the slip on the bottom of this layer and…
A fascinating class of patterns, often encountered in nature as meandering cracks on rocks, dried-out fields and tectonic plates is produced by the fracture of solids. Here we report the observation and modeling of an unusual type of…
We investigate the initiation of cracks in vertically freestanding water-saturated colloidal pillars constructed using a direct-write technique. Paradoxically, the cracks form during drying at the free end, far from the substrate, where the…
We study how the loading rate, specimen geometry and microstructural texture select the dynamics of a crack moving through an heterogeneous elastic material in the quasi-static approximation. We find a transition, fully controlled by two…
The pattern development of multiple cracks in extremely anisotropic solids such as bilayer or multilayer two-dimensional (2D) crystals contains rich physics, which, however, remains largely unexplored. We studied crack interaction across…
Drying of bacterial suspensions is frequently encountered in a plethora of natural and engineering processes. However, the evaporation-driven mechanical instabilities of dense consolidating bacterial suspensions have not been explored…
Cracks in thin layers are influenced by what lies beneath them. From buried craters to crocodile skin, crack patterns are found over an enormous range of length scales. Regardless of absolute size, their substrates can dramatically…
When cracks form in a thin contracting layer, they sequentially break the layer into smaller and smaller pieces. A rectilinear crack pattern encodes information about the order of crack formation, as later cracks tend to intersect with…
We report an experimental study of the crack pattern formed during the drying of a colloidal suspension. A horizontal fiber, which provides a one dimensional, boundary-free substrate, is coated by a film of micronic thickness. The geometry…
Volume alteration in solid materials is a common cause of material failure. Here we investigate the crack formation in thin elastic layers attached to a substrate. We show that small variations in the volume contraction and substrate…
Predicting when rupture occurs or cracks progress is a major challenge in numerous elds of industrial, societal and geophysical importance. It remains largely unsolved: Stress enhancement at cracks and defects, indeed, makes the macroscale…
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…