Speaker
Description
At large length scales any material behaviour is described using continuum approaches. Nowadays, when nanotechnology is already capable of producing new materials and devices on submicrometer scale, it has become indispensable to understand possible mechanical instabilities such as nanocrack initiation and the underlying physics at this scale. Brittle fracture through cleavage of crystal lattice is the simplest and most typical fracture associated with bond breaking. However, at the nanoscale, continuum methods based on linear elasticity start to fail in description of the lattice distortions and in predictions of its stability. Recently developed strain gradient elasticity theory (SGET) can help us to overcome this problem. In this work, we combined SGET with atomistic calculations in a model for prediction of crack stability and crack shape in selected brittle materials. This model has already been successfully tested for a number of crystals (such as Si and W [1]).
[1] M. Kotoul et al.; Mechanics of Materials 136 (2019) 103074
