• Weerheijm, J.
• Pereira, L. F. Magalhaes
• Sluys, Bert

Abstract

<p>This contribution presents a numerical study towards the propagation and branching of cracks in quasi-brittle materials, using a new effective rate-dependent damage model, enhanced by a stress-based nonlocal (SBNL) regularization scheme. This phenomenological model is mesh objective and reproduces the major phenomena associated with crack propagation and branching in quasi-brittle materials. It is discussed and demonstrated that the branching phenomenon is not controlled by a specific, material dependent, crack speed. Instead, it is governed by the evolution of the principal stresses at the crack tip, which are controlled by the evolution of damage. It is demonstrated that, with increasing crack speeds, the principal stresses at the crack tip tend to evolve from a mode-I to a mixed-mode state. Beyond a certain (critical) crack speed, the stress distribution around the crack tip reaches a critical state at which a single crack is no longer stable. When this condition is met, crack branching occurs whenever the stress field at the crack tip is destabilized by either a physical discontinuity or an interfering stress wave reflected at the specimen boundaries.</p>

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• crack