A Century of Fracture Mechanics: from Griffith Theory to Machine Learning Based Modelling

Abstract

The past century has witnessed the development of fracture mechanics as both a field of fundamental science and an active engineering discipline with ever increasing applications that involve structural failure and reliability. This lecture is aimed to review some of the landmark basic theories in fracture mechanics, including the Griffith theory of energy release rate, the J-integral and HRR field in elastic-plastic fracture mechanics, and the JKR and MD models in adhesive contact mechanics. There has also been tremendous applications of fracture mechanics concepts in failure and structural reliability of engineering components and structures. The lecture will end with discussions of some recent machine learning based modelling of fracture and toughening mechanisms in two-dimensional materials such as graphene and hBN, as well as perspectives on some of the remaining outstanding problems in the field.