SUMMARYCrack propagation in brittle materials with anisotropic surface energy is important in applications involving single crystals, extruded polymers, or geological and organic materials. Furthermore, when this anisotropy is strong, the phenomenology of crack propagation becomes very rich, with forbidden crack propagation directions or complex sawtooth crack patterns. This problem interrogates fundamental issues in fracture mechanics, including the principles behind the selection of crack direction. Here, we propose a variational phase-field model for strongly anisotropic fracture, which resorts to the extended Cahn-Hilliard framework proposed in the context of crystal growth. Previous phase-field models for anisotropic fracture were formulated in a framework only allowing for weak anisotropy. We implement numerically our higher-order phase-field model with smooth local maximum entropy approximants in a direct Galerkin method. The numerical results exhibit all the features of strongly anisotropic fracture and reproduce strikingly well recent experimental observations.

In strongly anisotropic materials the orientation-dependent fracture surface energy is a non-convex function of the crack angle. In this context, the classical Griffith model becomes ill-posed and requires a regularization. We revisit the crack kinking problem in materials with strongly anisotropic surface energies by using a variational phase-field model. The model includes in the energy functional a quadratic term on the second gradient of the phase-field. This term has a regularizing effect, energetically penalizing the crack curvature. We provide analytical formulas for the dependence of the surface energy on the crack direction and develop an open-source finite-element solver for the higher-order phase-field problem. Quantitative numerical experiments for the crack kinking problem show that the crack kinking directions observed in our phase-field simulations are in close agreement with the generalized maximum energy release rate criterion. Finally, we revisit a thermal quenching experiment in the case of slabs with strongly anisotropic surface energies. We show that the anisotropy can strongly affect the observed crack patterns, either by stabilizing straight cracks or by inducing zigzag crack patterns. In the case of zigzag cracks, we observe that crack kinking is always associated with an unstable propagation of a finite length add-crack in a single time-step.

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An analytical molecular mechanics model is developed to relate the bending properties of a single layer graphene to its atomic structure. Explicit expression for the bending stiffness of graphene with arbitrary chirality is derived. The results show that the bending stiffness of graphene depends significantly on the chiral angle, especially when the bending curvature is large. Curvature can induce significant anisotropic bending properties of graphene. The present analytical results are helpful for understanding of chirality- and curvature-dependent bending properties of graphene and thus useful for potential applications of graphene as a bending component of nano devices.

Tearing of brittle thin elastic sheets, possibly adhered to a substrate, involves a rich interplay between nonlinear elasticity, geometry, adhesion, and fracture mechanics. In addition to its intrinsic and practical interest, tearing of thin sheets has helped elucidate fundamental aspects of fracture mechanics including the mechanism of crack path selection. A wealth of experimental observations in different experimental setups is available, which has been often rationalized with insightful yet simplified theoretical models based on energetic considerations. In contrast, no computational method has addressed tearing in brittle thin elastic sheets. Here, motivated by the variational nature of simplified models that successfully explain crack paths in tearing sheets, we present a variational phase-field model of fracture coupled to a nonlinear Koiter thin shell model including stretching and bending. We show that this general yet straightforward approach is able to reproduce the observed phenomenology, including spiral or power-law crack paths in free standing films, or converging/diverging cracks in thin films adhered to negatively/positively curved surfaces, a scenario not amenable to simple models. Turning to more quantitative experiments on thin sheets adhered to planar surfaces, our simulations allow us to examine the boundaries of existing theories and suggest that homogeneous damage induced by moving folds is responsible for a systematic discrepancy between theory and experiments. Thus, our computational approach to tearing provides a new tool to understand these complex processes involving fracture, geometric nonlinearity and delamination, complementing experiments and simplified theories.

Engineered fibrous tissues consisting of cells encapsulated within collagen gels are widely used three-dimensional in vitro models of morphogenesis and wound healing. Although cell-mediated matrix remodeling that occurs within these scaffolds has been extensively studied, less is known about the mesoscale physical principles governing the dynamics of tissue shape. Here, we show both experimentally and by using computer simulations how surface contraction through the development of surface stresses (analogous to surface tension in fluids) coordinates with bulk contraction to drive shape evolution in constrained three-dimensional microtissues. We used microelectromechanical systems technology to generate arrays of fibrous microtissues and robot-assisted microsurgery to perform local incisions and implantation. We introduce a technique based on phototoxic activation of a small molecule to selectively kill cells in a spatially controlled manner. The model simulations, which reproduced the experimentally observed shape changes after surgical and photochemical operations, indicate that fitting of only bulk and surface contractile moduli is sufficient for the prediction of the equilibrium shape of the microtissues. The computational and experimental methods we have developed provide a general framework to study and predict the morphogenic states of contractile fibrous tissues under external loading at multiple length scales.

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We propose a carbon nanotube oscillator that is composed of a cantilever inner tube and a short outer tube. When the inner tube vibrates, the centrifugal force and the van der Waals force drive the outer tube to oscillate along the inner tube, which means that the oscillator can simultaneously output two frequencies. The operation frequencies of the oscillator may be tunable in a wide range (from tens of gigahertz to more than 100 GHz) by controlling the initial conditions. The combination of tunability and high-frequency operation makes the oscillators promising for a variety of scientific and technological applications. A continuum model is presented to study the frequency properties of the oscillator. The model is validated by the molecular dynamics simulations.