Abstract
The recent surging interest in nanotechnology is providing a strong impetus to understanding fracture processes in nanoscale materials. There are open challenges because many classical concepts of fracture mechanics are no longer applicable as the characteristic dimension of a structure at nanoscale becomes comparable to or smaller than the size of the cohesive zone near a crack tip. In this paper, we apply a top down approach, the recently developed Virtual-Internal-Bond (VIB) method to investigating fracture of such nano-materials. We demonstrate that, at a critical length scale typically on the order of nanometer scale, the fracture mechanism changes from the classical Gri th fracture to one of homogeneous failure near the theoretical strength of solids.
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