Dynamical event during slow crack propagation -: art. no. 105502

We address the role of material heterogeneities on the propagation of a slow rupture at laboratory scale. With a high speed camera, we follow an in-plane crack front during its propagation through a transparent heterogeneous Plexiglas block. We obtain two major results. First, the slip along the interface is strongly correlated over scales much larger than the asperity sizes. Second, the dynamics is scale dependent. Locally, mechanical instabilities are triggered during asperity depinning and propagate along the front. The intermittent behavior at the asperity scale is in contrast with the large scale smooth creeping evolution of the average crack position. The dynamics is described on the basis of a Family-Vicsek scaling.