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Materials science

Mind the helical crack

Nature volume 464, pages 42–43 (2010)Cite this article

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Catastrophic breakage of brittle materials such as ceramics is usually triggered by the rapid spreading of cracks. Computer simulations have now cracked the three-dimensional details of this process.

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Figure 1: Multiscale cracking.

a, S. PUETZER/PHOTOLIBRARY.COM

Figure 2: Cracked specimen under different types of loading.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Markus J. Buehler and Zhiping Xu are at the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics, and the Center for Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. mbuehler@mit.edu,

    Markus J. Buehler & Zhiping Xu

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  1. Markus J. Buehler
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  2. Zhiping Xu
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Buehler, M., Xu, Z. Mind the helical crack. Nature 464, 42–43 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464042a

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