Subcritical crack growth in fibrous materials

Abstract

We present experiments on the slow growth of a single crack in a fax paper sheet submitted to a constant force $F$. We find that statistically averaged crack growth curves can be described by only two parameters : the mean rupture time $\tau$ and a characteristic growth length $\zeta$. We propose a model based on a thermally activated rupture process that takes into account the microstructure of cellulose fibers. The model is able to reproduce the shape of the growth curve, the dependence of $\zeta$ on $F$ as well as the effect of temperature on the rupture time $\tau$. We find that the length scale at which rupture occurs in this model is consistently close to the diameter of cellulose microfibrils.

References in corpus (5)

• The effect of disorder on the fracture nucleation process
• Subcritical statistics in rupture of fibrous materials: Experiments and model
• Statistical Mechanics of Cracks: Thermodynamic Limit, Fluctuations, Breakdown, and Asymptotics of Elastic Theory
• Elastic Theory Has Zero Radius of Convergence
• Thermal activation of rupture and slow crack growth in a model of homogenous brittle materials

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Gaussian Statistics of Fracture Surfaces
• Discrepancy between sub-critical and fast rupture roughness: a cumulant analysis
• How heat controls fracture: the thermodynamics of creeping and avalanching cracks
• Slow crack growth : models and experiments
• Attractive and repulsive cracks in a heterogeneous material
• Record breaking bursts in a fiber bundle model of creep rupture
• Creep rupture as a non-homogeneous Poissonian process
• Super-Arrhenius dynamics for sub-critical crack growth in disordered brittle media
• A dynamical law for slow crack growth in polycarbonate films
• Thermally Activated Fracture of Porous Media