A model for the quasi-static growth of a brittle fracture: existence and approximation results

arXivmath/0101089MaRDI QIDQ6470865FDOQ6470865

Publication date: 10 January 2001

Abstract: We give a precise mathematical formulation of a variational model for the irreversible quasi-static evolution of a brittle fracture proposed by G.A. Francfort and J.-J. Marigo, and based on Griffith's theory of crack growth. In the two-dimensional case we prove an existence result for the quasi-static evolution and show that the total energy is an absolutely continuous function of time, although we can not exclude that the bulk energy and the surface energy may present some jump discontinuities. This existence result is proved by a time discretization process, where at each step a global energy minimization is performed, with the constraint that the new crack contains all cracks formed at the previous time steps. This procedure provides an effective way to approximate the continuous time evolution.

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Dependence of solutions to PDEs on initial and/or boundary data and/or on parameters of PDEs (35B30) Boundary value problems for second-order elliptic equations (35J25) Free boundary problems for PDEs (35R35) Optimization of shapes other than minimal surfaces (49Q10) Brittle fracture (74R10) Theoretical approximation in context of PDEs (35A35)

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