The Pure Shear (PS) crack specimen is widely employed to assess the fracture toughness of soft elastic materials. It serves as a valuable tool for investigating the behavior of crack growth in a steady-state manner following crack initiation. One of its advantages lies in the fact that the energy release rate (J) remains approximately constant for sufficiently long cracks, independent of crack length. Additionally, the PS specimen facilitates the easy evaluation of J for long cracks by means of a tension test conducted on an uncracked sample. However, the lack of a published expression for short cracks currently restricts the usefulness of this specimen. To overcome this limitation, we conducted a series of finite element (FE) simulations utilizing three different constitutive models, namely the neo-Hookean (NH), Arruda-Boyce (AB), and Mooney-Rivlin (MR) models. Our finite element analysis (FEA) encompassed practical crack lengths and strain levels. The results revealed that under a fixed applied displacement, the energy release rate (J) monotonically increases with the crack length for short cracks, reaches a steady-state value when the crack length exceeds the height of the specimen, and subsequently decreases as the crack approaches the end of the specimen. Drawing from these findings, we propose a simple closed-form expression for J that can be applied to most hyper-elastic models and is suitable for all practical crack lengths, particularly short cracks. 
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                            Fatigue-resistant polyurethane elastomer composites
                        
                    
    
            "This paper studies the lap shear, in which both the adhesive and adherends are elastic, but the adhesive is much softer than the adherends. The shear lag model identifies a length, called the shear lag length Ls. The energy release rate of a debond crack is affected by the elasticity of both the adhesive and adherends. Their relative importance is characterized by the ratio of the length of the remaining joint, L, to the shear lag length, Ls. In the short-joint limit, L/Ls→0, the adherends do not deform, and the elasticity of the adhesive gives the energy release rate. In the long-joint limit, L/Ls→∞, the interior of the adhesive does not deform, and the elasticity of the adherends gives the energy release rate. The shear lag model gives an approximate expression of the energy release rate for all values of L/Ls. This expression is in excellent agreement with the results obtained by finite element calculations, so long as the crack is long compared to the thickness of the adhesive." 
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                            - Award ID(s):
- 2011754
- PAR ID:
- 10499972
- Publisher / Repository:
- Elsevier
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Extreme Mechanics Letters
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 2352-4316
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 101434
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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