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The overall goal of this work-in-progress is to try to establish the fracture locus (i.e. the equivalent strain to fracture as a function of the stress triaxiality factor) for the high-strength AA7075-T651 aluminium alloy. Experiments on several specimen geometries enabled us to reach stress triaxialities in the range from σ* = 0 for shear tests to σ* = 1.4 for notched specimen tensile tests. For shear tests, failure occurred by strong strain localization. However, local stresses and strains can not be deduced directly from these tests. Consequently, Digital Image Correlation (DIC) was used to extract the local strain fields to failure. In parallel, numerical simulations of the tests were run using the non-linear finite element code LS-DYNA to extract the evolution of the local stress triaxiality during straining. Based on a combination of both experimental and numerical data, the failure locus of the material can be constructed.

When a dynamic crack front travels through material heterogeneities, elastic waves are emitted, which perturb the crack and change the morphology of the fracture surface. For asperity-free crystalline materials, crack propagation along preferential cleavage planes is expected to present a smooth crack front and form a mirror-like fracture surface. Surprisingly, we show here that in single crystalline silicon without material asperities, the crack front presents a local kink during high-speed crack propagation. Meanwhile, local oscillations of the crack front, which can move along the crack front, emerge at the front kink position and generate periodic fracture surface corrugations. They grow from angstrom amplitude to a few hundred nanometers and propagate with a long lifetime at a frequency-dependent speed, while keeping a scale-independent shape. In particular, the local front oscillations collide in a particle-like manner rather than proceeding with a linear superposition upon interaction, which presents the characteristic of solitary waves. We propose that such a propagating mode of the crack front, which results from the fracture energy fluctuation at a critical crack speed in the silicon crystal, can be considered as nonlinear elastic waves that we call "corrugation waves.", Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.

This paper presents an experimental and numerical study of Kuru grey granite impacted with a seven-buttons drill bit mounted on an instrumented drop test machine. The force versus displacement curves during the impact, so-called bit-rock interaction (BRI) curves, were obtained using strain gauge measurements for two levels of impact energy. Moreover, the volume of removed rock after each drop test was evaluated by stereo-lithography (three-dimensional surface reconstruction). A modified version of the Holmquist-Johnson-Cook (MHJC) material model was calibrated using Kuru granite test results available from the literature. Numerical simulations of the single drop tests were carried out using the MHJC model available in the LS-DYNA explicit finite-element solver. The influence of the impact energy and additional confining pressure on the BRI curves and the volume of the removed rock is discussed. In addition, the influence of the rock surface shape before impact was evaluated using two different mesh geometries: a flat surface and a hyperbolic surface. The experimental and numerical results are compared and discussed in terms of drilling efficiency through the mechanical specific energy.This article is part of the themed issue 'Experimental testing and modelling of brittle materials at high strain rates'., (© 2016 The Author(s).)