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Desiccation and Relaxation Regimes in Fracture of Drying Clay Films

Dibyendu Mal·Suparna Sinha·Tapati Dutta·S. Mitra·Sujata Tarafdar
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Abstract

A study of crack patterns in laponite films of different thickness is presented. Two cracking regimes are observed. The earlier with a higher rate of desiccation and shrinking has predominantly four-fold vertices in the crack network, while the later regime has less volume shrinking and forms mainly three-fold vertices. The pattern shows a self-similarity under coarse-graining. The graph of area covered by the cracks versus minimum crack-width resolved, scales with the film thickness. Curves representing crack area for different thickness can thus be made to collapse onto a single curve.

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Dibyendu Mal, Suparna Sinha, Tapati Dutta, S. Mitra, Sujata Tarafdar. 2005-04-07. Desiccation and Relaxation Regimes in Fracture of Drying Clay Films. https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0504158

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