Crack propagation in brittle heterogeneous solids: Material disorder and crack dynamics

摘要

Crack propagation in a linear elastic mate-rial with weakly inhomogeneous failure properties isanalyzed. An equation of motion for the crack is derivedin the limit of slow velocity. Predictions of this equationon both the average crack growth velocity and its fluc-tuations are compared with recent experimental resultsperformed on brittle heterogeneous materials (Ponsonin Phys Rev Lett, 103, 055501; Maloy et al. in PhysRev Lett, 96, 045501). They are found to reproduce quantitatively the main features of crack propagationin disordered systems. This theoretical framework pro-vides new tools to predict life time and fracture energyof materials from their properties at the micro-scale.