Fracture path in an anisotropic material in the light of a friction experiment

A slider is pulled by means of a flexible link on a flat solid surface which exhibits anisotropic frictional properties. The resulting trajectory of the slider is assessed experimentally. First, we check that the experimental results are in excellent agreement with a theoretical description of the problem based on an expression of the frictional forces. Second, we point out that the trajectory of the slider can be recovered by the use of a "maximum of energy release rate" criterion which is generally used to predict the path of a fracture even if the validity of the principle is difficult to verify in the latter complex systems.