title: Hydraulic Fracture and Toughening of a Brittle Layer Bonded to a Hydrogel.
abstract: Brittle materials propagate opening cracks under tension. When stress increases beyond a critical magnitude, then quasistatic crack propagation becomes unstable. In the presence of several precracks, a brittle material always propagates only the weakest crack, leading to catastrophic failure. Here, we show that all these features of brittle fracture are fundamentally modified when the material susceptible to cracking is bonded to a hydrogel, a common situation in biological tissues. In the presence of the hydrogel, the brittle material can fracture in compression and can hydraulically resist cracking in tension. Furthermore, the poroelastic coupling regularizes the crack dynamics and enhances material toughness by promoting multiple cracking.
authors.affiliation: SISSA-International School for Advanced Studies, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lucantonio
authors.affiliation: SISSA-International School for Advanced Studies, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Noselli
authors.affiliation: Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Baldiri Reixac 15-21, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.|Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, 08010 Barcelona, Spain.|Facultat de Medicina, Universitat de Barcelona, 08036 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Trepat
authors.affiliation: SISSA-International School for Advanced Studies, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: DeSimone
authors.affiliation: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, C/ Jordi Girona 1, 08034 Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Marino
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arroyo
mesh_terms: D020100:Hydrogels / Q000737:chemistry*; D008422:Materials Testing; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013314:Stress, Mechanical
chemical_list: D020100:Hydrogels