Dynamic instabilities of fracture under biaxial strain using a phase field model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a phase field model for fracture propagation under biaxial strain that accurately reproduces various crack behaviors and experimental phenomena, including oscillating cracks and supercritical Hopf bifurcation.

Contribution

The authors develop a simple physical phase field model that captures complex fracture behaviors and matches recent experimental observations under biaxial loading.

Findings

Model reproduces local symmetry, Griffith, and Irwin criteria.

Successfully simulates oscillating cracks under biaxial load.

First to simulate supercritical Hopf bifurcation in fracture.

Abstract

We present a phase field model of the propagation of fracture under plane strain. This model, based on simple physical considerations, is able to accurately reproduce the different behavior of cracks (the principle of local symmetry, the Griffith and Irwin criteria, and mode-I branching). In addition, we test our model against recent experimental findings showing the presence of oscillating cracks under bi-axial load. Our model again reproduces well observed supercritical Hopf bifurcation, and is therefore the first simulation which does so.