cRacklet: a spectral boundary integral method library for interfacial rupture simulation

Abstract

The study of dynamically propagating rupture along interfaces is of prime importance in various fields and system sizes, including tribology (nm to μm), engineering (mm to m) and geophysics (m to km) (Armstrong-Hélouvry et al., 1994; Ben-Zion, 2008; Vanossi et al., 2013). Numerical simulations of these phenomena are computationally costly and challenging, as they usually require the coupling of two different spatio-temporal scales. A fine spatial discretization is needed to represent accurately the singular fields associated with the rupture edges. Besides, the problems of interest usually involve a larger length scale along which rupture will propagate driven by long-range traveling elastic waves. The physical phenomena at play also occur at different timescales, from the slow process of rupture nucleation to the fast propagation of crack front close the elastic wave speeds. Large and finely discretized spatio-temporal domains are required, which are computationally costly. In addition, the behavior of such interfaces can be highly non-linear thus increasing the problem complexity. The use of boundary integral methods reduces the dimensionality of the problem. This enables to focus the computational efforts on the fracture plane and allows for a detailed description of the interfacial failure processes.