The Stress-Strain State and Potential Crack Trajectories in 2D Elastic Brittle Materials from Steady-State Flow Experiments
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Abstract
A steady-state flow method is used to examine micromechanisms of brittle failure in 2D elastic cracked media submitted to uniaxial compressive stress. The steady-state flow experiments were conducted with an incompressible Newtonian fluid in a Hele Shaw cell. Thin linear rubber inclusions were inserted in the cell to model preexisting cracks and flow was visualised by a continuous injection of methylen blue dye. Several experiments with different configurations of inclusions were conducted: 1) one single inclusion inclined at different angles b to the flow direction, 2) left lateral shear of right or left-stepping en échelon inclusions with various overlapping and 3) several randomly-distributed inclusions. The flow lines around the inclusions show very strong similarity with the trajectories of growth of similarly arranged cracks in uniaxially compressed brittle plates. Although the similarity between Hele shaw flow and elastic deformation is not fully understood yet, the method may be used to visualise both crackinduced perturbation of the stress field and crack interaction and allows accurate predictions of the potential crack's trajectories for one or several pre-existing cracks in two dimensions