2009/07/31 by Daniel Bonamy, D. Bonamy
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Composite Material Mechanics #Numerical methods in engineering #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0022-3727/42/21/214014
published as Journal of Physics D 42, 214014 (2009) · 38 pages, invited review for J. Phys. D cluster issue on "Fracture: from the Atomic to the Geophysics Scale"
openalex publication_date 2009/10/21 · arxiv created 2010/01/04 · arxiv updated 2010/01/07 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Stress enhancement in the vicinity of brittle cracks makes the macro-scale failure properties extremely sensitive to the micro-scale material disorder. Therefore, (i) fracturing systems often display a jerky dynamics, so-called crackling noise, with seemingly random sudden energy release spanning over a broad range of scales, reminiscent of earthquakes; (ii) fracture surfaces exhibit roughness at scales much larger than that of material microstructure. Here, I provide a critical review of experiments and simulations performed in this context, highlighting the existence of universal scaling features, independent of both the material and the loading conditions, reminiscent of critical phenomena. I finally discuss recent stochastic descriptions of crack growth in brittle disordered media that seem to capture qualitatively—and sometimes quantitatively—these scaling features.