Deformation and Thermodynamic Response During Brittle Fracture

摘要

This paper briefly describes extensions of Griffith's and other continuum mechanics concepts to obtain a discontinuum model of the deformations and thermodynamics during brittle fracture. The model describes crack density with a statistical mechanics approach, and makes an analogy between a crack and a dislocation. Thus, a scalar crack density function can be defined analogous to a scalar dislocation density function. The scalar crack density is a function argument in a functional representation for the relative deformations between atoms. The relative deformation functional has a lattice structure deformation that is represented by a function as an in continuum mechanics and a crack deformation that is represented by a functional somewhat analogous to the discontinuum mechanics for dislocations. The thermodynamics is almost analogous to that for dislocations, except for the surface dependence during crack propagation and crack opening. The deformation and thermodynamic modelling, are outlined. (ERA citation 08:048200)