2011/10/24 by Chih‐Hung Chen, Hepeng Zhang, J. Niemczura +2 · 23 citations
Decision Sciences · Engineering · Materials Science · Mathematics · #Composite material #Elasticity and Material Modeling #Geometry #Materials science #Mathematics #Natural rubber #Polymer crystallization and properties #Probabilistic and Robust Engineering Design #Scaling
paper · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/96/36009
published in Europhysics Letters (EPL) 96(3), 36009 (Institute of Physics)
openalex publication_date 2011/10/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
We have conducted experiments and numerical simulations to investigate supersonic cracks. The experiments are performed at 85 ◦ C to suppress strain-induced crystallites that complicate experiments at lower temperature. Calibration experiments were performed to obtain the parameters needed to compare with a theory including viscous dissipation. We find that both experiments and numerical simulations support supersonic cracks, and we discover a transition from subsonic to supersonic as we plot experimental crack speed curves vs. extension ratio for different sized samples. Both experiments and simulations show two different scaling regimes: the speed of subsonic cracks scales with the elastic energy density while the speed of supersonic cracks scales with the extension ratio. Crack openings have qualitatively different shapes in the two scaling regimes. Copyright c EPLA, 2011