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 language | English (US) |
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Article number | 101944 |
Journal | Extreme Mechanics Letters |
Volume | 58 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 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