Study on Rate Dependent Fracture Behavior of Structures; Application to Brittle Materials Using Molecular Dynamics

The failure behavior of structures is changed under different loading rates, which might arise from the rate dependency of materials. This phenomenon has been focused in the engineering fields. However, the failure mechanism is not fully understood yet, so that it is hard to be implemented in numerical simulations. In this study, the numerical experiments to a brittle material are simulated by the Molecular Dynamics (MD) for understanding the rate dependent failure behavior. The material specimen with a notch is modeled for the compact tension test simulation. Lennard-Jones potential is used to describe the properties of a brittle material. Several dynamic failure features under 6 different loading rates are achieved from the numerical experiments, where remarkable characteristics such as crack roughness, crack recession/arrest, and crack branching are observed during the crack propagation. These observations are interpreted by the energy inflow-consumption rates. This study will provides insight about the dynamic failure mechanism under different loading rates. In addition, the applicability of the MD to the macroscopic mechanics is estimated by simulating the previous experimental research.