2007/07/30 by Eytan Katzav, E. Katzav, M. Adda-Bedia +5 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Adhesion, Friction, and Surface Interactions #Material Dynamics and Properties #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.76.051601
published as Phys. Rev. E 76 051601 (2007) · 15 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2007/07/30 · openalex publication_date 2007/11/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate propagating fronts in disordered media that belong to the universality class of wetting contact lines and planar tensile crack fronts. We derive from first principles their nonlinear equations of motion, using the generalized Griffith criterion for crack fronts and three standard mobility laws for contact lines. Then we study their roughness using the self-consistent expansion. When neglecting the irreversibility of fracture and wetting processes, we find a possible dynamic rough phase with a roughness exponent of zeta=1/2 and a dynamic exponent of z=2. When including the irreversibility, we conclude that the front propagation can become history dependent, and thus we consider the value zeta=1/2 as a lower bound for the roughness exponent. Interestingly, for propagating contact line in wetting, where irreversibility is weaker than in fracture, the experimental results are close to 0.5, while for fracture the reported values of 0.55-0.65 are higher.