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 ef...

Stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) fracturing in tight oil reservoirs often induces complex fracture-network growth, which has a fundamentally different formation mechanism from traditional planar bi-winged fracturing. To reveal the mechanism of fracture network propagation, this paper employs a modified displacement discontinuity method (DDM), mechanical mechanism analysis and initiation and pr...

We investigate propagating fronts in disordered media that belong to the universality class of wetting contact lines and planar tensile crack fronts. We derive from first principles their nonlinear equations of motion, using the generalized Griffith criterion for crack fronts and three standard mobility laws for contact lines. Then we study their roughness using the self-consistent expansion. W...

The study of rock fractures is essential in evaluating stability of underground structures, understanding earthquakes, and assessing storage and transport of oil and gas in rock formations. Geophysical monitoring techniques, particularly compressional and shear wave propagation, can probe the internal structure of rock and fractures remotely and nondestructively and can provide insight into fra...

The dynamic fracture behavior of layered architectures is experimentally studied. Specifically, crack penetration, trapping, and branching at an interface are examined. A newly introduced optical technique called Digital Gradient Sensing (DGS) that quantifies elasto-optic effects due to a non-uniform state of stress is extended to perform full-field measurements during the fracture event using ...

in order to investigate the role of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (mwcnts) on fracture mechanism of epoxy nanocomposites, a series of tensile standard specimens reinforced with different carbon nanotube contents (0, 0.3, 0.6 and 1 wt%) were produced. the fracture surfaces of the produced nanocomposites were evaluated using scanning electron microscope (sem). the results show that the surface frac...

We present a new numerical approach for wave induced dynamic fracture. The method is based on discontinuous Galerkin approximation of the first-order hyperbolic system elastic waves and phase-field brittle fracture driven by maximum tension. algorithm staggered in time combines an implicit midpoint rule propagation followed Euler step evolution. At fracture, material degraded, are reflected at ...

The formation of dense spacing fracture network is crucial to the hydraulic fracturing treatment of unconventional reservoir. However, one difficulty for fracturing treatment is the lack of clear understanding on the nature of fracture complexity created during the treatment. In this paper, fracture propagation is numerically investigated to find the conditions needed for the stable propagation...