Skip over navigation

 

Flaw Insensitive Fracture in Nanocrystalline Graphene

Teng Zhang (Brown unversity), Xiaoyan Li (Tsinghua University), sara kadkhodaei (Brown university), Huajian Gao (Brown University)

Crack initiation and growth: methods, applications, and challenges

Tue 2:40 - 4:00

Sayles Auditorium

We show from a series of molecular dynamics simulations that the tensile fracture behavior of a nanocrystalline graphene (nc-graphene) nanostrip can become insensitive to a pre-existing flaw (e.g., a hole or a notch) below a critical length scale, in the sense that there exists no stress concentration near the flaw, the ultimate failure does not necessarily initiate at the flaw, and the normalized strength of the strip is independent of the size of the flaw. This study is a first direct atomistic simulation of flaw insensitive fracture in high strength nanoscale materials and provides significant insights into the deformation and failure mechanisms of nc-graphene.