Understanding fast macroscale fracture from microcrack post mortem patterns

TL;DR

This study reconstructs the microcracking dynamics during fast fracture in brittle amorphous materials, revealing that microcracks propagate at a constant low velocity and collectively accelerate macrofracture through geometric effects.

Contribution

It introduces a post mortem analysis method to resolve microcrack dynamics at high resolution, uncovering their role in macrofracture acceleration in brittle materials.

Findings

Microcracks propagate at a uniform low velocity.

Microcracks collectively accelerate macrofracture via geometric effects.

Damage-related internal variables influence fracture dynamics.

Abstract

Dynamic crack propagation drives catastrophic solid failures. In many amorphous brittle materials, sufficiently fast crack growth involves small-scale, high-frequency microcracking damage localized near the crack tip. The ultra-fast dynamics of microcrack nucleation, growth and coalescence is inaccessible experimentally and fast crack propagation was therefore studied only as a macroscale average. Here, we overcome this limitation in polymethylmethacrylate, the archetype of brittle amorphous materials: We reconstruct the complete spatio-temporal microcracking dynamics, with micrometer / nanosecond resolution, through post mortem analysis of the fracture surfaces. We find that all individual microcracks propagate at the same low, load-independent, velocity. Collectively, the main effect of microcracks is not to slow down fracture by increasing the energy required for crack propagation, as commonly believed, but on the contrary to boost the macroscale velocity through an acceleration factor selected on geometric grounds. Our results emphasize the key role of damage-related internal variables in the selection of macroscale fracture dynamics.