How hidden 3D structure within crack fronts reveals energy balance

Brittle Crack Propagation Based on an Optimal Energy Balance

How to quantify cervical carcinoma invasion fronts in 3D?

In this short note we briefly introduce a newly developed image processing chain for a 3D reconstruction of serially sectioned tissue specimens. Provided a stack of digitised transmitted light microscope colour images of cervical tissue specimens, the procedure finally results in a 3D quantification and visualisation of the tumour invasion front of the respective cervical tumour within the spec...

Discontinuous Crack Fronts of Three-Dimensional Fractures

– The relation between fracture surface morphology and the three-dimensional structure of crack fronts is investigated through direct observation of brittle cracks in gels. A key notion in this investigation is the discontinuity of the crack front, whose advancement creates the fracture surface. We discuss the significance of our findings in the studies of general three-dimensional brittle frac...

Energy consistent framework for continuously evolving 3D crack propagation

This paper presents a formulation for brittle fracture in 3D elastic solids within the context of configurational mechanics. The local form of the first law of thermodynamics provides a condition for equilibrium of the crack front. The direction of the crack propagation is shown to be given by the direction of the configurational forces on the crack front that maximise the local dissipation. Th...

How Obstacles Perturb Population Fronts and Alter Their Genetic Structure

As populations spread into new territory, environmental heterogeneities can shape the population front and genetic composition. We focus here on the effects of an important building block of heterogeneous environments, isolated obstacles. With a combination of experiments, theory, and simulation, we show how isolated obstacles both create long-lived distortions of the front shape and amplify th...