Depinning dynamics of crack fronts

TL;DR

This paper studies the depinning dynamics of crack fronts in heterogeneous materials, revealing that the process is governed by dissipative mechanisms rather than inertia, and provides a predictive overdamped model.

Contribution

It introduces a new overdamped equation of motion for crack front depinning, linking crack speed fluctuations to material-specific parameters and advancing understanding of fracture dynamics.

Findings

Depinning dynamics are controlled by dissipation, not inertia.

Crack speed fluctuations can be predicted by an overdamped model.

The model relates fracture energy variation to crack speed behavior.

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 $v_0 = G_c(v_m)/G_c'(v_m)$ 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.