Eur. Phys. J. B 44, 365-372 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2005-00135-2

Numerical study of the temperature and porosity effects on the fracture propagation in a 2D network of elastic bonds

¹ Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, DSM/DRECAM/Service de Physique et Chimie des Surfaces et Interfaces, Bât. 462, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
² Laboratoire Fluide, Automatique et Systèmes Thermiques, UMR No. 7608, CNRS, Université Paris 6 and 11, Bâtiment 502, Université Paris Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
³ Laboratoire d'Étude des Milieux Nanométriques, Université d'Evry, Bâtiment des Sciences, rue du père Jarlan, 91025 Evry Cedex, France

Corresponding author: ^a auradou@fast.u-psud.fr

Received: 15 November 2004
Revised: 14 February 2005
Published online: 28 April 2005

Abstract

This article reports results concerning the fracture of a 2d triangular lattice of atoms linked by springs. The lattice is submitted to controlled strain tests and the influence of both porosity and temperature on failure is investigated. The porosity is found on one hand to decrease the stiffness of the specimen but on the other hand it increases the deformation sustained prior to failure. Temperature is shown to control the ductility due to the presence of cavities that grow and merge. The rough surfaces resulting from the propagation of the crack exhibit self-affine properties with a roughness exponent over a range of length scales which increases with temperature. Large cavities also have rough walls which are found to be fractal with a dimension, D, which evolves with the distance from the crack tip. For large distances, D is found to be close to 1.5, and close to 1.0 for cavities just before their coalescence with the main crack.