Abstract
Cracks in brittle materials produce two types of generic surface structures: facets at low velocities and microbranches at higher ones. Here we observe a transition from faceting to microbranching in polyacrylamide gels that is characterized by nonlinear dynamic localization of crack fronts. To better understand this process we derive a first-principles nonlinear equation of motion for crack fronts in the context of scalar elasticity. Its solution shows that nonlinear focusing coupled to rate dependence of dissipation governs the transition to microbranching.
Original language | American English |
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Article number | 215505 |
Journal | Physical Review Letters |
Volume | 119 |
Issue number | 21 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 21 Nov 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Eran Bouchbinder for a thorough reading of the manuscript. J. F. and I. K. acknowledge the support of the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 1523/15), as well as the US-Israel Bi-national Science Foundation (Grant No. 2016950).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Physical Society.