Mathematical Modeling of the Desiccation Cracking

Abstract

Desiccation cracks have a net-like appearance and tessellate the drying surface of the materials into polygonal cells with the typical size. The basic features of the crack pattern and the pattern formation process are conserved regardless of the choice of the materials. This implies the existence of the common governing mechanism behind the pattern formation in desiccation cracking. We propose the coupled model of desiccation, deformation, and fracture for the desiccation crack phenomenon in the framework of the continuum mechanics. By using this coupled model and the appropriate numerical analysis methods, the typical geometry and the typical length scale of the desiccation crack pattern are reproduced in the complete homogeneous field without any artificial length scale. These results indicate that the proposed coupled model captures the fundamental mechanism for the pattern formation in desiccation cracking.