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Published on: April 27, 2019
Depinning transition in the failure of inhomogeneous brittle materials
1Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA. ponson@caltech.edu
Abstract:
The dynamics of cracks propagating in elastic inhomogeneous materials is investigated experimentally. The variations of the average crack velocity with the external driving force are measured for a brittle rock and shown to display two distinct regimes: an exponential law characteristic of subcritical propagation at a low driving force and a power law above a critical threshold. This behavior can be explained quantitatively by extending linear elastic fracture mechanics to disordered systems. In this description, the motion of a crack is analogous to the one of an elastic line driven in a random medium, and critical failure occurs when the external force is sufficiently large to depin the crack front from the heterogeneities of the material.
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