disorder

In this work, we show that the combination of material quenched disorder (of finite strength/amplitude and correlation length) and a 2D tip-splitting instability (that gives rise to extra fracture surfaces) is at the heart of the spatiotemporal dynamics of cracks in 3D. Specifically, it is shown to account for the widely observed limiting (terminal) velocity of cracks, mirror-mist-hackle sequence of morphological transitions, crack macro-branching and a 3D-to-2D transition, out-of-plane crack front waves and the properties of micro-branches.  

In this pair of preprints (see also attached PDFs):

Quenched disorder and instability control dynamic fracture in three dimensions

Facet formation in slow three-dimensional fracture

Understanding the fracture toughness of glasses is of prime importance for

science and technology. We study it here using extensive atomistic simulations in

which the interaction potential, glass transition cooling rate, and loading geometry

are systematically varied, mimicking a broad range of experimentally accessible

properties. Glasses’ non-equilibrium mechanical disorder is quantified through

Ag, the dimensionless prefactor of the universal spectrum of non-phononic