Influence of the material substructure on crack propagation: a unified treatment

TL;DR

This paper develops a unified theoretical framework to analyze how material substructure influences crack propagation, incorporating finite deformations and complex energies, with applications to ferroelectrics and strain-gradient materials.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized approach to crack driving forces accounting for material substructure effects in a 3D continuum setting.

Findings

Modified J-integral expression for complex materials

Applicable to ferroelectrics and strain-gradient materials

Fits experimental data reasonably well

Abstract

The influence of the material texture (substructure) on the force driving the crack tip in complex materials admitting Ginzburg-Landau-like energies is analyzed in a three-dimensional continuum setting. The theory proposed accounts for finite deformations and general coarse-grained order parameters. A modified expression of the J-integral is obtained together with other path-integrals which are necessary to treat cases where the process zone around the tip has finite size. The results can be applied to a wide class of material substructures. As examples, cracks in ferroelectrics and in materials with strain-gradient effects are discussed: in these cases the specializations of the general results fit reasonably experimental data.