Less is more: removing a single bond increases the toughness of elastic networks

TL;DR

Removing a single bond in elastic networks can either weaken or strengthen the material's toughness, with the overall effect depending on the bond's position and the crack path, revealing new ways to enhance material toughness.

Contribution

This study demonstrates how the strategic removal of a single bond can significantly increase the toughness of elastic networks, providing new insights into defect roles in material design.

Findings

Removing a bond can lower or raise fracture initiation energy.

Failure fracture energy is always equal or higher than perfect networks.

Crack bridging enhances toughness at low failure strains.

Abstract

We investigate how the removal of a single bond affects the fracture behavior of triangular spring networks, whereby we systematically vary the position of the removed bond. Our simulations show that removing the bond has two contrasting effects on the fracture energy for initiation of crack propagation and on the fracture energy for failure of the entire network. A single missing bond can either lower or raise the initiation fracture energy, depending on its placement relative to the crack tip. In contrast, the failure fracture energy is always equal to or greater than that of a perfect network. For most initial placements of the missing bond, the crack path remains straight, and the increased failure fracture energy results from arrest at the point of maximum local fracture resistance. When the crack deviates from a straight path, we observe an even higher fracture energy, which we attribute primarily to crack bridging. This additional toughening mechanism becomes active only at low failure strains of the springs; at higher failure strains, the crack path tends to remain straight. Altogether, our results demonstrate that even a single bond removal can significantly enhance toughness, offering fundamental insights into the role of defects in polymer networks and informing the design of tough architected materials.