Phase‐Field Simulation of Crack Propagation at Adhesive Interfaces in Brittle Materials

Anisotropic mesh adaptation for quasistatic crack propagation in brittle materials

The numerical simulation of quasistatic fracturing of brittle material, where no predefined crack path is imposed, is a challenging problem. In particular, we deal with the Francfort-Marigo model which requires the minimization of the well-known nonconvex and nonsmooth Mumford-Shah functional. To deal with a smoother problem which eases the minimization process of the energy, we consider the Γ-...

Crack initiation in brittle materials

In this paper we study the crack initiation in a hyper-elastic body governed by a Griffith’s type energy. We prove that, during a load process through a time dependent boundary datum of the type t → tg(x) and in absence of strong singularities (this is the case of homogeneous isotropic materials) the crack initiation is brutal, i.e., a big crack appears after a positive time ti > 0. On the cont...

An Einstein Model of Brittle Crack Propagation

We propose a minimal nonlinear model of brittle crack propagation by considering only the motion of the crack-tip atom. The model captures many essential features of steady-state crack velocity and is in excellent quantitative agreement with many-body dynamical simulations. The model exhibits lattice-trapping. For loads just above this, the crack velocity rises sharply, reaching a limiting valu...

Crack path prediction in anisotropic brittle materials.

A force balance condition to predict quasistatic crack paths in anisotropic brittle materials is derived from an analysis of diffuse interface continuum models that describe both short-scale failure and macroscopic linear elasticity. The path is uniquely determined by the directional anisotropy of the fracture energy, independent of details of the failure process. The derivation exploits the gr...

Energy minimizing brittle crack propagation II