From September 6 to 11, Sebastian Pfaller and Lukas Laubert attended the 25th European Conference on Fracture (ECF25) at the Athens Conservatoire in Athens, Greece.
Sebastian co-hosted the four-session mini-symposium TC04, “Experimental and Numerical Approaches to Fracture of Polymer, Polymer Composites, and Adhesives”, together with Andreas J. Brunner and Bamber Blackman, co-chairs of ESIS Technical Committee 04. The mini-symposium received the bronze medal for attracting the third-highest number of talks.
Sebastian gave the talk “Scale-Bridging Simulations of Fracture: What Can We Learn from Such Investigations?”, co-authored by Lukas Laubert, Eva Maria Richter, Maximilian Ries, Felix Weber, Wuyang Zhao, and Maxime Vassaux. He introduced the foundations of coupling continuum mechanics with molecular simulation approaches for polymers and presented our recent research on the fracture of amorphous materials.
Lukas held a talk titled “Setup of MD-FE Coupled Models for Fracture Investigation”. Using silica models as an example, he showed parts of the preparation pipeline, from the molecular dynamics model to the coupling itself. He also reported on the alignment of fracture-mechanical quantities in macroscopic coupled MD-FE models under different load cases using a novel coupling technique.
Furthermore, Sebastian presented the work of our group member Wuyang Zhao on “Crack-Tip Deformation Mechanisms in Glassy Thermoplastics Revealed by Particle-Continuum Coupling Simulations”. The work investigates how particle-continuum coupling simulations can reveal the molecular processes behind crack-tip deformation, from early plastic deformation to stable necking and eventual fibrillar breakdown.
Leon Pyka, another FRASCAL participant, also presented his work at the mini-symposium in a talk titled “Investigating Interfacial Fracture of Architected Composites”, co-authored with Christian Greff, Paolo Moretti, and Michael Zaiser. The study examined how hierarchical structures can increase fracture toughness by arresting crack propagation, offering insights into the design of architected materials with improved fracture resistance.
It was a special pleasure to meet Maxime Vassaux (Institut de Physique de Rennes) again, a long-standing friend and research colleague. Maxime presented our joint work, “The Capriccio Method as a Versatile Tool for Quantifying the Fracture Properties of Glassy Materials under Complex Loading Conditions with Chemical Specificity”, building on research conducted by Felix Weber, a former Capriccio group member, on the fracture properties of silica glass under different loading modes using the Capriccio method.
We greatly enjoyed discussing the results with the other participants and thank the organisers and all colleagues for the fruitful exchange!