Related papers: Toy models for the falling chimney
This work is devoted so show the appearance of different cracking modes in linearly elastic thin film systems by means of an asymptotic analysis as the thickness tends to zero. By superposing two thin plates, and upon suitable scaling law…
We argue that closed string tachyons drive two spacetime topology changing transitions -- loss of genus in a Riemann surface and separation of a Riemann surface into two components. The tachyons of interest are localized versions of…
In this paper, we augment existing techniques for simulating flexible objects to include models for crack initiation and propagation in three-dimensional volumes. By analyzing the stress tensors computed over a finite element model, the…
The thermodynamic dislocation theory presented in preceding papers is used here to describe shear-banding instabilities. Central ingredients of the theory are a thermodynamically defined effective configurational temperature, and a formula…
The "melting" of self-formed rigid structures made of a small number of interacting classical particles confined in an irregular two-dimensional space is investigated using Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that the interplay of…
The quantum-to-classical transition hinges on the nature of wavefunction collapse, which remains a central controversy in foundational physics. Objective collapse theories aim to modify quantum mechanics by introducing a physical,…
The Rayleigh--Taylor instability which is responsible for the occurrence of narrow upward jets are studied in the scope of the nonhydrostatic model with horizontally--nonuniform density and the Newtonian cooling. As analysis shows, the…
The advantages and disadvantages of some pedagogical non-relativistic quantum-mechanical models, used to illustrate spontaneous symmetry breakdown, are discussed. A simple quantum-mechanical toy model (a spinor on the line, subject to a…
Ba\v{z}ant et al. have proposed a model of a gravity-driven collapse of a tall building which collapses in a progressive-floor collapse after the failure of a single storey. The model allows the re-computation of the structural resistance…
The theory of symmetry breaking in presence of gauge fields is presented, following the historical track. Particular emphasis is placed upon the underlying concepts.
The structured deformation theory is used within the thermodynamics of irreversible processes framework in order to build a damage model relevant for quasi-brittle materials. The cracks are supposed smeared in the body and their shape is…
We introduce a model for fractures in quenched disordered media. This model has a deterministic extremal dynamics, driven by the energy function of a network of springs (Born Hamiltonian). The breakdown is the result of the cooperation…
Failure in brittle materials under dynamic loading conditions is a result of the propagation and coalescence of microcracks. Simulating this mechanism at the continuum level is computationally expensive or, in some cases, intractable. The…
The mechanical response, serviceability, and load bearing capacity of materials and structural components can be adversely affected due to external stimuli, which include exposure to a corrosive chemical species, high temperatures,…
We investigate spontaneous symmetry breaking in a conformally invariant gravitational model. In particular, we use a conformally invariant scalar tensor theory as the vacuum sector of a gravitational model to examine the idea that…
The rupture of a medium under stress typifies breakdown phenomena. More generally, the latter encompass the dynamics of systems of many interacting elements governed by the interplay of a driving force with a pinning disorder, resulting in…
The collapse of cavities under shock is a key problem in various fields ranging from erosion of material, ignition of explosive, to sonoluminescence, etc. We study such processes using the material-point-method developed recently in the…
In the classroom demonstration of a tennis ball dropped on top of a basketball, the surprisingly high bounce of the tennis ball is typically explained using momentum conservation for elastic collisions, with the basketball-floor collision…
We discuss the mass splitting between the the top and bottom quarks in a technicolor scenario. The model proposed here contains a left-right electroweak gauge group. An extended technicolor group and mirror fermions are introduced. The…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a fundamental notion in modern physics, ranging from high energy to condensed matter. However, the usual spontaneous symmetry breaking only considers the equal probability to select the vacua. In this work,…