Delayed Fracture of an Inhomogeneous Soft Solid
Daniel Bonn,
*
Hamid Kellay,
Michaël Prochnow,
Karim Ben-Djemiaa,
Jacques Meunier
The spontaneous fracture of polymer gels was studied. Contrary to
crystalline solids, where fracture usually happens instantaneously at a
well-defined breaking strength, the fracture of a polymer gel can occur
with a delay. When a constant force was applied, the cracks nucleated
and started to propagate after a delay that can be as long as 15 minutes, depending on the force. This phenomenon can be understood by
calculating the activation energy for crack nucleation in arbitrary
dimension and accounting for the inhomogeneity of the gel network in
terms of its fractal dimension.
D. Bonn, M. Prochnow, K. Ben-Djemiaa, J. Meunier, Laboratoire de
Physique Statistique de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 rue
Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France.
H. Kellay, Centre de Physique Moléculaire Optique et Hertzienne,
Université Bordeaux 1, 351, Cours de la Libération, 33405 Talence, France.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
bonn{at}physique.ens.fr
