The “pure-shear” fracture test for viscoelastic elastomers and its revelation on Griffith fracture

Bhavesh Shrimali, Oscar Lopez-Pamies

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Strikingly, “pure-shear” fracture tests have repeatedly shown that fracture nucleation in (common hydrocarbon and other types of) viscoelastic elastomers occurs at a critical stretch that is independent of the stretch rate at which the test is carried out. In this Letter, we demonstrate that this remarkable – yet overlooked – experimental finding implies that the Griffith criticality condition that governs nucleation of fracture from large pre-existing cracks in viscoelastic elastomers can be written in fact as an expression not in terms of an elusive loading-history-dependent critical tearing energy Tc, as ordinarily done, but as one exclusively in terms of the intrinsic fracture energy Gc of the elastomer.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number101944
JournalExtreme Mechanics Letters
Volume58
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2023

Keywords

  • Critical energy release rate
  • Dissipative solids
  • Elastomers
  • Fracture nucleation
  • Viscoelasticity

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Bioengineering
  • Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous)
  • Engineering (miscellaneous)
  • Mechanics of Materials
  • Mechanical Engineering

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