Further Remarks on Stochastic Damage Evolution of Brittle Solids Under Dynamic Tensile Loading

Abstract

This article illuminates some general features and provides elementary interpretations of the deformation, damage, and failure of brittle solids characterized by very low fracture energy. The dynamic response of these materials is determined to a large extent by stochastic and random factors. The investigation emphasis is on the moderate-to-extremely high rate range (10 s-1, 1 × 109 s-1), explored under practically identical in-plane stress conditions. The statistical approach is based on repeated particle dynamics simulations for different physical realizations of micromechanical disorder of a 2D brittle discrete system. The proposed strategy is computationally intensive, which necessitates simplicity of the laws governing the interparticular interaction. Based on the simulation results, an expression is proposed to model the mean tensile strength dependence on the strain rate. The linearity of the rate dependence of the stress-peak macroscopic response parameters is observed and discussed.