Science, Space and Technology News 2024
By using innovative imaging techniques, researchers have shown that crack complexity increases material toughness, challenging traditional views and suggesting new approaches in material design and testing. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
The last time you dropped a favorite mug or sat on your glasses, you may have been too preoccupied to take much notice of the intricate pattern of cracks that appeared in the broken object. But capturing the formation of such patterns is the specialty of John Kolinski and his team at the Laboratory of Engineering Mechanics of Soft Interfaces in EPFL’s School of Engineering.
“The energy required to drive cracks has traditionally been considered a material property, but our work yields unique insights into the key role of geometry: namely, that by increasing the complexity of geometric features at the crack tip, a material can be made effectively tougher, because more strain energy is required to advance a complex crack than a simple one,” Kolinski says. “This highlights an important gap in the current theory for 3D cracks.
“People have long known that cracks can become complex by looking at fracture surfaces after the fact, but what is lost is the understanding of the loading conditions when the crack emerged, or what forces the sample was exposed to,” Kolinski explains. “Our innovative imaging method has made it possible to characterize this relationship rigorouslyA rendering of 3D crack front data in a brittle hydrogel recorded with a confocal fluorescence microscope.
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