Fracture and Fractals in Glasses

Abstract

AbstractOriginal model of bond waves is atpplied to the problem of fracture in glasses when considering it from the fractal point of view. Bond waves are assumed to be traveling above Tg, the glass transition temperature, and frozen in solid material(T<Tg), and just alone the stopped wavefronts (WF) populatedwith weakened bonds the fracture occurs. Crack, initiating at a given WF, then develops along WF's belonging to this system (a given bond wave) and/or another set (coexisting bond wave), and may oscillate between them. The arising surface represents a natural fractal whose fractal dimension depends on the mode of bond waves interaction and their arrangement relatively to the crack direction.