Abstract
Crack propagation is the dominant mode of failure of materials under tension. However, our understanding of the impact of microstructural parameters on the macroscopic resistance to crack growth is still largely incomplete. In particular, the prediction of an effective fracture energy from the description of the material at a microscopic scale remains out of reach of the traditional homogenization techniques that are unable to deal with the innate localized nature of the fracture processes. A promising route is offered by a perturbative approach to Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics developed by Rice (JAM, 1985), which allowed to describe the failure of heterogeneous media as a depinning transition (Bonamy and Bouchaud, Phys. Rep., 2011).
In this talk, we build on this framework, and explore how effective fracture properties of brittle materials can be predicted from a spatial description of the material disorder. In particular, we focus on how the positional disorder and the shape of the heterogeneities may affect the homogenized fracture energy of a brittle composite. The predictions of statistical physics-based models are compared to numerical results of large-scale crack propagation along heterogeneous interfaces (Lebihain, IJF, 2021). We conclude by discussing how these results may be influenced by (i) the presence of an energetic dissipation within a finite-size region located near the crack front (Lebihain et al., arXiv preprint, 2022) and (ii) crack dynamics (Roch et al., arXiv preprint, 2022).
Brief Bio
Mathias Lebihain is an assistant professor in Solid Mechanics at Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, France. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2019 from Sorbonne Université, where he developed homogenization techniques for the fracture properties of brittle composites under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Baptiste Leblond and Dr. Laurent Ponson. He then investigated earthquake nucleation and propagation at EPFL, Switzerland. He moved in 2021 to Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, where he focuses on the emergence of failure properties from material disorder and physical couplings.
Register to attend talk via Zoom