Open AccessExistence of strong solutions for quasi-static evolution in brittle fracture
Author(s) -
JeanFrançois Babadjian,
Alessandro Giacomini
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
annali della scuola normale superiore di pisa. classe di scienze
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.444
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 2036-2145
pISSN - 0391-173X
DOI - 10.2422/2036-2145.201106_003
Subject(s) - brittle fracture , fracture (geology) , brittleness , geology , materials science , mathematics , geotechnical engineering , composite material
This paper is devoted to prove the existence of strong solutions for a brittle fracture model of quasi-static crack propagation in the two dimensional antiplane setting. As usual, the time continuous evolution is obtained as the limit of a discrete in time evolution by letting the time step tend to zero. The analysis rests on a density lower bound estimate for quasi-minimizers of Mumford-Shah type functionals, under a homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition on a part of the boundary. In contrast with the previous results, since boundary cracks may be obtained as limits of interior cracks, such a density lower bound has to be established also on balls centered inside the domain but possibly intersecting the Dirichlet boundary. Thanks to a 2D geometrical argument, the discrete in time crack turns out to satisfy a uniform density lower bound which can pass to the limit, leading to the closedness of the continuous in time crack. We also establish better convergence properties of the discrete in time displacement/crack pair towards its time continuous counterpart