Controlling fracture cascades through twisting and quenching
Author(s)
Heisser, Ronald Henry; Patil, Vishal P.; Stoop, Norbert; Villermaux, Emmanuel; Dunkel, Jörn
DownloadPublished version (1.232Mb)
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Fracture fundamentally limits the structural stability of macroscopic and microscopic matter, from beams and bones to microtubules and nanotubes. Despite substantial recent experimental and theoretical progress, fracture control continues to present profound practical and theoretical challenges. While bending-induced fracture of elongated rod-like objects has been intensely studied, the effects of twist and quench dynamics have yet to be explored systematically. Here, we show how twist and quench protocols may be used to control such fracture processes, by revisiting Feynman's observation that dry spaghetti typically breaks into three or more pieces when exposed to large pure bending stresses. Combining theory and experiment, we demonstrate controlled binary fracture of brittle elastic rods for two distinct protocols based on twisting and nonadiabatic quenching. Our experimental data for twist-controlled fracture agree quantitatively with a theoretically predicted phase diagram, and we establish asymptotic scaling relations for quenched fracture. Due to their general character, these results are expected to apply to torsional and kinetic fracture processes in a wide range of systems. ©2018 Keywords: fracture cascade; elastic rods; scaling laws
Date issued
2018-08Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics; MultiScale Materials Science for Energy and Environment, Joint MIT-CNRS LaboratoryJournal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Heisser, Ronald H., et al. "Controlling Fracture Cascades through Twisting and Quenching."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 15, 35 (Aug. 2018): 8665-8670; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1802831115 ©2018 Author(s)
Version: Final published version
ISSN
1091-6490
0027-8424