Breaking the Speed Limit: Cracks Can Travel Faster than Expected
Our work on supershear propagation of tensile cracks got recently published in Physical Review Letters. Our simulations shed light on how geometric non-linearities allow cracks to propagate faster than predicted limits.
While theory predicts cracks to propagate slower than a known maximum speed, our computer simulations unveil a remarkable phenomenon: tensile cracks can exceed these predicted limits and travel faster than the shear wave speed. Through our investigation, we identify geometric non-linearities in materials as a major contributor enabling this unexpected behavior. Our findings challenge long-standing assumptions in the field and offer new insights into the complexities of crack propagation.
Check out the paper here: external pagehttps://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.226102