Roughness of Interfacial Crack Fronts: Stress-Weighted Percolation in the Damage Zone

Jean Schmittbuhl (1, 2) , Alex Hansen (1, 2) , G. George Batrouni (1)

1 INLN - Institut Non Linéaire de Nice Sophia-Antipolis
2 International Center for Condensed Matter Physics Brasilia

We study numerically the roughness exponent of an in-plane fracture front slowly propagating along a heterogeneous interface embedded in an elastic body, using a model based on the evolution of a process zone rather than a fracture line. We find = 0.60±0.05. For the first time, simulation results are in close agreement with experimental results. We then show that the roughness exponent is related to the correlation length exponent of a stress-weighted percolation problem through = /(1 + ). A numerical study of the stress-weighted percolation problem yields = 1.54 giving = 0.61 in close agreement with our numerical results and with experimental observations.

Mots clés: interface roughness; cracks; fracture; elasticity; simulation; critical exponents; Green's function methods

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]

Jean Schmittbuhl, Alex Hansen, G. George Batrouni. Roughness of Interfacial Crack Fronts: Stress-Weighted Percolation in the Damage Zone. Physical Review Letters, 2003, 90, pp.0545505. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.045505⟩. ⟨hal-00017373⟩