Cracking the crack: What do we learn from the statistical properties of fracture surfaces? (INVITED)

Abstract eng:
Fracture surfaces have been a preferred field of investigation for understanding material failure as their roughness encodes the crack growth mechanisms. But the challenge is to decipher this information in terms of failure processes. Here, we analyze the roughness of several fractured materials like concrete, ceramics and metallic alloy and show that they share the same statistical structure: Below some length scale E, the slope amplitudes are uncorrelated and the surface is mono-affine while above é, long-range spatial correlations lead to a multifractal behavior, reminiscent of turbulent flows. These features reveal a common growth mechanism of cracks that propagate through damage coalescence at small scale and resembles to an elastic line at large scale. The crossover length i characterizes the extent of the crack tip damaged zone. Its measurement from the statistical analysis of fracture surfaces provides a way to measure the toughness of a material after its failure.

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