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Controlled Strain of 3D Hydrogels under Live Microscopy Imaging
Published on: December 4, 2020
Fingering instability during fracture of a gel block subjected to shear loading
Krishna Kant Kundan1, Animangsu Ghatak1,2
1Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India.
Abstract:
We report here an alternative kind of fingering instability observed during fracture of an unconfined gel consisting of two cuboids joined by a thin gel disk, and all prepared monolithically. When the blocks are sheared across the joint, fracture ensues with the appearance of fingers at the fracture front. The spacing between the fingers remains independent of the shearing speed, planar shape of the joint, and the shear modulus of gel. Importantly this instability appears without any effect of confinement of the gel block, and its wavelength remains dependent on the lateral size of the disk, in contrast to all known instances of fingering phenomena in confined viscous, elastic, and viscoelastic systems.
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