Dynamic mode I crack growth in a sheet with an edge pre-crack subject to remote impact tensile loading is investigated experimentally and computationally. Separation is constrained to occur along a weak interface directly ahead of the pre-crack tip. The experiments are carried out on a PDMS sheet composed of two sheets glued together to make the weak surface in front of the pre-crack. The thickness and composition of the glue are varied to provide different cohesive properties. In the calculations, the sheet material is represented by an isotropic hyperelastic constitutive relation and the weak interface is represented by a zero thickness cohesive surface with the cohesive traction related to the displacement jump across the interface. The calculations are in qualitative agreement with the experiments for the propagation speed, the shape of the opening along the interface and general features of the deformation distribution in the material. Both the experiments and the calculations indicate that a characteristic length scale, associated with the cohesive response of the interface plays a key role in affecting the propagation speed and the mode of separation. When the cohesive length scale is sufficiently small, propagation is crack-like and the propagation speed does not exceed the Rayleigh wave speed. An increased value of the cohesive length scale leads to a propagation speed that exceeds the shear wave speed. Transition to a spall-like separation mode occurs when the opening traction on the remaining ligament reaches the cohesive strength of the interface. A cohesive interface with a larger value of the work of separation can have a faster separation speed than one having the same cohesive strength but a smaller value of the work of separation. For calculations with loading imposed on the faces of the pre-crack, so that propagation occurs into unstressed material, the propagation speed does not exceed the Rayleigh wave speed even for a very weak interface.

Material failure is mediated by the propagation of cracks which, in realistic 3D materials, typically involves multiple coexisting fracture planes. Multiple fracture-plane interactions create poorly understood out-of-plane crack structures, such as step defects on tensile fracture surfaces. Steps form once a slowly moving, distorted crack front segments into disconnected overlapping fracture planes separated by a stabilizing distance hmax. Our experiments on numerous brittle hydrogels reveal that hmax varies linearly with both a nonlinear elastic length and a dissipation length. Here, is the measured crack velocity dependent fracture energy, and is the shear modulus.

Slow cracks may be simple, with no internal structure. The leading edge of a simple crack, the crack front, forms a single fracture plane in its wake. Slow cracks may also develop segmented crack fronts, each segment propagating along a separate fracture plane. These planes merge at locations that form steps along fracture surfaces. Steps are not stationary, but instead propagate within a crack front. Real-time measurements of crack front structure and energy flux reveal that step dynamics significantly increase energy dissipation and drastically alter crack dynamics. Simple and stepped cracks are each stable. By extending the use of energy balance to include 3D crack front structure, we find that, while energy balance is obeyed, it is insufficient to select the energetically favorable crack growth mode. Transitions from stepped cracks to simple cracks occur only when their in-plane front lengths become equal and a perturbation momentarily changes step topology. Such 3D crack dynamics challenge our traditional understanding of fracture.

Brittle materials fail by means of rapid cracks. Classical fracture mechanics describes the motion of tensile cracks that dissipate released elastic energy within a point-like zone at their tips. Within this framework, a "classical"tensile crack cannot exceed the Rayleigh wave speed, cR. Using brittle neohookean materials, we experimentally demonstrate the existence of "supershear"tensile cracks that exceed shear wave speeds, cR. Supershear cracks smoothly accelerate beyond cR, to speeds that could approach dilatation wave speeds. Supershear dynamics are governed by different principles than those guiding "classical"cracks; this fracture mode is excited at critical (material dependent) applied strains. This nonclassical mode of tensile fracture represents a fundamental shift in our understanding of the fracture process.

Griffith's energetic criterion, or ‘energy balance’, has for a century formed the basis for fracture mechanics; the energy flowing into a crack front is precisely balanced by the dissipation (fracture energy) at the front. If the crack front structure is not properly accounted for, energy balance will either appear to fail or lead to unrealistic results. Here, we study the influence of the secondary structure of low-speed crack propagation in hydrogels under tensile loading conditions. We first show that these cracks are bistable; either simple (cracks having no secondary structure) or faceted crack states (formed by steps propagating along crack fronts) can be generated under identical loading conditions. The selection of either crack state is determined by the form of the initial ‘seed’ crack; perfect seed cracks generate simple cracks while a small local mode III component generates crack fronts having multiple steps. Step coarsening eventually leads to single steps that propagate along crack fronts. As they evolve, steps locally change the instantaneous structure and motion of the crack front, breaking transverse translational invariance. In contrast to simple cracks, faceted cracks can, therefore, no longer be considered as existing in a quasi-2D system. For both simple and faceted cracks we simultaneously measure the energy flux and local dissipation along these crack fronts over velocities, v, spanning 0R (cR is the Rayleigh wave speed). We find that, in the presence of secondary structure within the crack front, the implementation of energy balance must be generalized for 3D systems; faceted cracks reveal energy balance, only when we account for the local dynamic dissipation at each point along the crack front.

While we fundamentally understand the dynamics of simple cracks propagating in brittle solids within perfect (homogeneous) materials, we do not understand how paths of moving cracks are determined. We experimentally study strongly perturbed cracks that propagate between 10% and 95% of their limiting velocity within a brittle material. These cracks are deflected by either interaction with sparsely implanted defects or via an intrinsic oscillatory instability in defect-free media. Dense high-speed measurements of the strain fields surrounding the crack tips reveal that crack paths are governed by the direction of maximal strain energy density, even when the near-tip singular fields are highly disrupted. This fundamentally important result may be utilized to either direct or guide running cracks.

The cohesive zone is the elusive region in which material fracture takes place. Here, the putatively singular stresses at a crack's tip are regularized. We present experiments, performed on PMMA, in which we visualize the cohesive zone of frictional ruptures as they propagate. Identical to shear cracks, these ruptures range from slow velocities to nearly the limiting speeds of cracks. We reveal that the cohesive zone is a dynamic quantity; its spatial form undergoes a sharp transition between distinct phases at a critical velocity. The structure of these phases provides an important window into material properties under the extreme conditions that occur during fracture.

Cracks develop intricate patterns on the surfaces that they create. As faceted fracture surfaces are commonly formed by slow tensile cracks in both crystalline and amorphous materials, facet formation and structure cannot reflect microscopic order. Although fracture mechanics predict that slow crack fronts should be straight and form mirror-like surfaces, facet-forming fronts propagate simultaneously within different planes separated by steps. Here we show that these steps are topological defects of crack fronts and that crack front separation into disconnected overlapping segments provides the condition for step stability. Real-time imaging of propagating crack fronts combined with surface measurements shows that crack dynamics are governed by localized steps that drift at a constant angle to the local front propagation direction while their increased dissipation couples to long-ranged elasticity to determine front shapes. We study how three-dimensional topology couples to two-dimensional fracture dynamics to provide a fundamental picture of how patterned surfaces are generated.

Fracture of highly stretched materials challenges our view of how things break. We directly visualize rupture of tough double-network gels at >50% strain. During fracture, crack tip shapes obey a x∼y1.6 power law, in contrast to the parabolic profile observed in low-strain cracks. A new length scale â.," emerges from the power law; we show that â.," scales directly with the stored elastic energy and diverges when the crack velocity approaches the shear wave speed. Our results show that double-network gels undergo brittle fracture and provide a testing ground for large-strain fracture mechanics.

Progress in the prediction of crack initiation and propagation requires understanding its interaction with localized perturbations. Here we investigate the intrinsic instabilities of crack fronts that nucleate from heterogeneities and create surface structure. By visualizing the crack front as it forms the fracture surface we show a direct quantitative relationship between crack front deformation and surface structure.

Cracks in brittle materials produce two types of generic surface structures: facets at low velocities and microbranches at higher ones. Here we observe a transition from faceting to microbranching in polyacrylamide gels that is characterized by nonlinear dynamic localization of crack fronts. To better understand this process we derive a first-principles nonlinear equation of motion for crack fronts in the context of scalar elasticity. Its solution shows that nonlinear focusing coupled to rate dependence of dissipation governs the transition to microbranching.

Highly-deformable materials, from synthetic hydrogels to biological tissues, are becoming increasingly important from both fundamental and practical perspectives. Their mechanical behaviors, in particular the dynamics of crack propagation during failure, are not yet fully understood. Here we propose a theoretical framework for the dynamic fracture of highly-deformable materials, in which the effects of a dynamic crack are treated with respect to the nonlinearly deformed (pre-stressed/strained), non-cracked, state of the material. Within this framework, we derive analytical and semi-analytical solutions for the near-tip deformation fields and energy release rates of dynamic cracks propagating in incompressible neo-Hookean solids under biaxial and uniaxial loading. We show that moderately large pre-stressing has a marked effect on the stress fields surrounding a crack's tip. We verify these predictions by performing extensive experiments on the fracture of soft brittle elastomers over a range of loading levels and propagation velocities, showing that the newly developed framework offers significantly better approximations to the measurements than standard approaches at moderately large levels of external loadings and high propagation velocities. This framework should be relevant to the failure analysis of soft and tough, yet brittle, materials.

The origin of the microbranching instability is a long-standing unresolved issue in the fracture of brittle amorphous materials. We investigate the onset of this instability by measuring the real-time dynamics and symmetries of the strain fields produced by rapid tensile cracks in brittle gels. We find that once a simple tensile crack is subjected to shear perturbations, cracks undergo the microbranching instability above a finite velocity-dependent threshold. We further reveal a distinct relation between the microbranching and the oscillatory instabilities of rapid cracks.

We briefly review a number of important recent experimental and theoretical developments in the field of dynamic fracture. Topics include experimental validation of the equations of motion for straight tensile cracks (in both infinite media and strip geometries), validation of a new theoretical description of the near-tip fields of dynamic cracks incorporating weak elastic nonlinearities, a new understanding of dynamic instabilities of tensile cracks in both 2D and 3D, crack front dynamics, and the relation between frictional motion and dynamic shear cracks. Related future research directions are briefly discussed.

When fast cracks become unstable to microscopic branching (microbranching), fracture no longer occurs in an effective 2D medium. We follow in-plane crack front dynamics via real-time measurements in brittle gels as microbranching unfolds and progresses. We first show that spatially local energy balance quantitatively describes crack dynamics, even when translational invariance is badly broken. Furthermore, our results explain microbranch dynamics; why microbranches form along spatially localized chains and how finite-time formation of cusps along the crack front leads to their death.