DYNAMIC FRACTURE OF DISORDERED VISCOELASTIC SOLIDS

Dynamic fracture of disordered viscoelastic solids is studied computat ionally using the Born-Maxwell model. Two types of disorder have been considered, namely, correlated density disorder and topological disord er. In both cases fracture instability in terms of crack branching occ urs. For density disorder dense spots in the system are found to be an effective mechanism of crack arrest. This shows in the length of the daughter cracks and also serves as a mechanism for crack curving. In c ase of topologically disordered systems we see branch bending. The com plicated topology of cracks obeys a scaling law which has been found e xperimentally.