Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

The Meaning, Selection, And Use Of The Peridynamic Horizon And Its Relation To Crack Branching In Brittle Materials, Florin Bobaru, Wenke Hu

Florin Bobaru Ph.D.

This note discusses the peridynamic horizon (the nonlocal region around a material point), its role, and practical use in modeling. The objective is to eliminate some misunderstandings and misconceptions regarding the peridynamic horizon. An example of crack branching in a nominally brittle material (homalite) is addressed and we show that crack branching takes place without wave interaction. We explain under what conditions the crack propagation speed depends on the horizon size and the role of incident stress waves on this speed.