New NSF grant: "Diffusion-Driven Fracture"

A new project “Diffusion-driven fracture” has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

This project will support the research of one graduate and several undergraduate students. A short description follows:

Fracture mechanics is often concerned with prediction the development and propagation of cracks in materials subject to given sollicitations. In some situations however, the actual sollicitations depend strongly on the geometry of the cracks themselves. A classical example is that of mud-crack patterns induced by evaporation itself strongly influenced by the development of new crack surfaces. Other peoblems of this class are commonly encountered in hydraulic fracturing, fracture in ferro and piezoelectric materials, corrosion stress fracture of metals, environmental stress fracture of glass and polymers, fracture of electrodes in Li-ion batteries, thermal cracks, and ion diffusion in cements. In this project, the PI proposes to construct rigorous models for such diffusino driven fracture problems. With his students, he will develop computer codes on parallel supercomputer and use them to study specific problems