Simulating materials failure by using up to one billion atoms and the world's fastest computer: Brittle fracture.
We describe the first of two large-scale atomic simulation projects on materials failure performed on the 12-teraflop ASCI (Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative) White computer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This is a multimillion-atom simulation study of crack propagation in rapid brittle fracture where the cracks travel faster than the speed of sound. Our finding centers on a bilayer solid that behaves under large strain like an interface crack between a soft (linear) material and a stiff (nonlinear) material. We verify that the crack behavior is dominated by the local (nonlinear) wave speeds, which can be in excess of the conventional sound speeds of a solid.
IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120; T. J. Watson Research Laboratory, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598; Max-Planck Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart, D-70569 Germany; and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550.
Farid F
FF
Abraham
Robert
R
Walkup
Huajian
H
Gao
Mark
M
Duchaineau
Tomas
T
Diaz De La Rubia
Mark
M
Seager