Depinning dynamics of crack fronts

Abstract

We investigate experimentally and theoretically the dynamics of a crack front during the micro-instabilities taking place in heterogeneous materials between two successive equilibrium positions. We focus specifically on the spatio-temporal evolution of the front, as it relaxes to a straight configuration, after depinning from a single obstacle of controlled strength and size. We show that this depinning dynamics is not controlled by inertia, but instead, by the rate dependency of the dissipative mechanisms taking place within the fracture process zone. This implies that the crack speed fluctuations around its average value $v_m$ can be predicted from an overdamped equation of motion $(v-v_m)/v_0=(G-G_c(v_m))/G_c(v_m)$ involving the characteristic material speed $v_0=G_c(v_m)/G_c^{\prime }(v_m)$ that emerges from the variation of fracture energy with crack speed. Our findings pave the way to a quantitative description of the critical depinning dynamics of cracks in disordered solids and open up new perspectives for the prediction of the effective failure properties of heterogeneous materials.

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• Damage spreading in quasi-brittle disordered solids: II. What the statistics of precursors teach us about compressive failure
• Long-range interactions in the avalanches of elastic interfaces
• Adaptation of the tapered double cantilever beam test for the measurement of fracture energy and its variations with crack speed
• Dual Role for Heterogeneity in Dynamic Fracture