The role of rigidity in controlling material failure.
We investigate how material rigidity acts as a key control parameter for the failure of solids under stress. In both experiments and simulations, we demonstrate that material failure can be continuously tuned by varying the underlying rigidity of the material while holding the amount of disorder constant. As the rigidity transition is approached, failure due to the application of uniaxial stress evolves from brittle cracking to system-spanning diffuse breaking. This evolution in failure behavior can be parameterized by the width of the crack. As a system becomes more and more floppy, this crack width increases until it saturates at the system size. Thus, the spatial extent of the failure zone can be used as a direct probe for material rigidity.
The James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL;
Michelle M
MM
Driscoll
Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Bryan Gin-Ge
BG
Chen
Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Thomas H
TH
Beuman
Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Stephan
S
Ulrich
The James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL;
Sidney R
SR
Nagel
Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands vitelli@lorentz.leidenuniv.nl.
Vincenzo
V
Vitelli
cracks; failure; glasses; jamming; metamaterials