Phys.org September 2, 2024
When porous materials are subjected to compressive loads, localized failure chains or anticracks, can occur and cause large-scale structural failure. The resistance to anticrack growth is governed by fracture toughness. To understand more about the mixed-mode fracture toughness for highly porous materials subjected to shear and compression, an international team of researchers (Germany, Switzerland) designed fracture mechanical field experiments tailored for weak layers in a natural snowpack. Using a mechanical model for interpretation, they calculated the fracture toughness for anticrack growth for the full range of mode interactions, from pure shear to pure collapse. The measurements showed that fracture toughness values a
were significantly larger in shear than in collapse, and suggested a power-law interaction between the anticrack propagation modes. According to the researchers their results offer insights into the fracture characteristics of anticracks in highly porous materials and provide important benchmarks for computational modeling… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Mixed-mode fracture tests. Credit: Nature Communications volume 15, Article number: 7379, 2 September 2024