Research Interests

Validation of Large Scale Fracture and Fragmentation Simulations

Collaborators: M. Ortiz, Caltech; Staff: V. Chalivendra, J. Knapp, S. Hong, Caltech

A detailed experimental and numerical program has been designed to validate large scale numerical simulations of dynamic crack propagation, branching, deflection, and penetration at interfaces in brittle homogeneous materials. High-speed photography in conjunction with the dynamic photoelasticity has been used to observe real-time failure mode transition mechanism at the interfaces. Wedge-loaded Homalite-100 plate specimens produce a single, straight, mode-I propagation crack towards an inclined interface. A modified Hopkinson bar setup is used to accurately control initial and boundary conditions of crack face loading. Various interface angles and different bond strengths are modeled using large scale computations which feature both bulk and interfacial cohesive elements laws. The penetration/deflection behavior of incident mode-I cracks, and the crack tip speed history studied in detail.

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Division of Engineering & Applied Science
California Institute of Technology
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