Propagating mode-I fracture in amorphous materials using the continuous random network (CRN) model

Abstract

We study propagating mode-I fracture in two dimensional amorphous materials using atomistic simulations. We used the continuous random network (CRN) model of an amorphous material, creating samples using a two dimensional analogue of the WWW (Wooten, Winer & Weaire) Monte-Carlo algorithm. For modeling fracture, molecular-dynamics simulations were run on the resulting samples. The results of our simulations reproduce the main experimental features. In addition to achieving a steady-state crack under a constant driving displacement (which had not yet been achieved by other atomistic models for amorphous materials), the runs show micro-branching, which increases with driving, transitioning to macro-branching for the largest drivings. Beside the qualitative visual similarity of the simulated cracks to experiment, the simulation also succeeds in explaining the experimentally observed oscillations of the crack velocity.

References in corpus (1)

• Study of the branching instability using a phase field model of inplane crack propagation

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The Dynamics of Rapid Fracture: Instabilities, Nonlinearities and Length Scales
• Propagation Mechanism of Brittle Cracks
• Microbranching in mode-I fracture using large scale simulations of amorphous and perturbed lattice models
• Micro-branching in mode-I fracture in a randomly perturbed lattice
• 3D-2D transition in mode-I fracture microbranching in a perturbed hexagonal close-packed lattice