Abstract

AbstractWe present a theory for the morphology of the fracture surface left behind by slowly propagating cracks in linear, isotropic and homogeneous three dimensional solids. Our results are based on first order perturbation theory of the equations of elasticity for cracks whose shape is slightly perturbed from planar. For cracks propagating under pure type I loading we find that all perturbation modes are linearly stable, from which we can predict the roughness of the fracture surface induced by fluctuations in the material. We compare our results with the classical results for cracks propagating in two dimensional systems, and discuss the effects in the three dimensional analysis which result from taking into account contributions from non-singular terms of the stress field, as well as the effects arising from finite speeds of crack propagation.

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