USING ANALYTICAL APPROACH FOR CALCULATING LOCALIZED STRESS FIELD NEAR CENTRAL SLIT CRACK IN AMORPHOUS MATERIAL AT ATOMISTIC SCALE

The localized stress field helps in predicting the crack initiation and its growth in fracture mechanics. At an atomistic scale, a localized stress field has been calculated by virial theorem for anisotropic materials. However, there is still confusion regarding its validation and comparison, as its origin differs from continuum stress. Moreover, finding the localized stress field at the atomic site for amorphous materials are complicated and tedious by the virial approach due to the presence of different elements at disordered positions. Therefore, there is a need to develop a method which does not have there drawbacks. The present work has developed an analytical approach to calculate localized stress fields at an atomistic scale. First, the stress field calculated with this method has been validated in crystalline materials like silicon with virial and finite element (FEM) results. As this method validates linear elasticity near the crack tip. The same localized approach has been used in silica to validate stress field with FEM result. The proposed method in the present work can be used under mixed-mode conditions to study crack initiation and its growth in amorphous solids.
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