Soft-Clamp Fiber Bundle Model and Interfacial Crack Propagation: Comparison Using a Non-linear Imposed Displacement

We compare experimental observations of a slow interfacial crack propagation along an heterogeneous interface to numerical simulations using a soft-clamped fiber bundle model. The model consists of a planar set of brittle fibers between a deformable elastic half-space and a rigid plate with a square root shape that imposes a non-linear displacement around the process zone. The non-linear square-root rigid shape combined with the long range elastic interactions is shown to provide more realistic displacement and stress fields around the crack tip in the process zone and thereby significantly improving the predictions of the model. Experiments and model are shown to share a similar self-affine roughening of the crack front both at small and large scales and a similar distribution of the local crack front velocity. Numerical predictions of the Family-Viscek scaling for both regimes are discussed together with the local velocity distribution of the fracture front.