Modeling and numerical simulation of tearing brittle thin-sheets

BIN LI; DANIEL MILLÁN; MARINO ARROYO

Madrid

Congreso; 9th European Solid Mechanics Conference (ESMC2015); 2015

Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies of Materials

Thin sheets are very common in nature, technology and daily life. Tearing refers to the situation in which cracks propagate in a thin sheet driven by out-of-plane forces (mod III) loading. The classical linear elastic fracture mechanics had been successfully applied to understand and predict crack propagation in brittle materials under in-plane tensile (mode I) or shear (modeII) loading. However, this theory is challenged by tearing of thin sheets. Geometry, together with the interplay between stretching and bending deformation, leads to non-trivial and rich behaviors, particularly when the tearing thin film is adhesively coupled to a flat or curved substrate. The complexity of these problems restricts analytical solutions to very simplified settings, which do not fully explain a wealth of experimental observations. To explore tearing of thin films, we have developed a model and a computational framework coupling elasticity (stretching and bending), fracture, and adhesion to a substrate. The fracture of brittle thin sheets is modeled using the variational approach to fracture. The delamination of thin sheets adhered to substrates is modeled with a cohesive model. We numerically implement the model with subdivision finite elements.