Blaise Bourdin

The Variational Approach to Fracture Blaise Bourdin 1st Ed. Softcover of Orig. Ed. 2008 edition

Presenting original results from both theoretical and numerical viewpoints, this text offers a detailed discussion of the variational approach to brittle fracture. This approach views crack growth as the result of a competition between bulk and surface energy, treating crack evolution from its initiation all the way to the failure of a sample. The authors model crack initiation, crack path, and crack extension for arbitrary geometries and loads.