Publications

Atomic-scale interaction of a crack and an infiltrating fluid

Jones, Reese E.; Tucker, W.C.; Rimsza, Jessica R.; Criscenti, Louise C.

In this work we investigate the Orowan hypothesis, that decreases in surface energy due to surface adsorbates lead directly to lowered fracture toughness, at an atomic/molecular level. We employ a Lennard-Jones system with a slit crack and an infiltrating fluid, nominally with gold-water properties, and explore steric effects by varying the soft radius of fluid particles and the influence of surface energy/hydrophobicity via the solid–fluid binding energy. Using previously developed methods, we employ the J-integral to quantify the sensitivity of fracture toughness to the influence of the fluid on the crack tip, and exploit dimensionless scaling to discover universal trends in behavior.