Quenched disorder and instability control dynamic fracture in three dimensions

In this work, we show that the combination of material quenched disorder (of finite strength/amplitude and correlation length) and a 2D tip-splitting instability (that gives rise to extra fracture surfaces) is at the heart of the spatiotemporal dynamics of cracks in 3D. Specifically, it is shown to account for the widely observed limiting (terminal) velocity of cracks, mirror-mist-hackle sequence of morphological transitions, crack macro-branching and a 3D-to-2D transition, out-of-plane crack front waves and the properties of micro-branches.  

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51573-6