Attractive and repulsive cracks in a heterogeneous material

Pierre-Philippe Cortet (1) , Guillaume Huillard (1) , Loïc Vanel (1) , Sergio Ciliberto (1)

1 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon

We study experimentally the paths of an assembly of cracks growing in interaction in a heterogeneous two-dimensional elastic brittle material submitted to uniaxial stress. For a given initial crack assembly geometry, we observe two types of crack path. The first one corresponds to a repulsion followed by an attraction on one end of the crack and a tip to tip attraction on the other end. The second one corresponds to a pure attraction. Only one of the crack path type is observed in a given sample. Thus, selection between the two types appears as a statistical collective process.

Keywords: Fracture mechanics; Pattern; Crack paths; Crack interactions; Heterogeneous materials

Domains: Physics [physics]; Condensed Matter [cond-mat]; Materials Science [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; Physics [physics]; Mechanics [physics]; Mechanics of materials [physics.class-ph]

Pierre-Philippe Cortet, Guillaume Huillard, Loïc Vanel, Sergio Ciliberto. Attractive and repulsive cracks in a heterogeneous material. Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2008, 2008 (10), ⟨10.1088/1742-5468/2008/10/P10022⟩. ⟨ensl-00299089v2⟩