Multiphysics modeling of subcritical crack growth in glass

Subcritical crack growth starting from flaws on glass surfaces/edges causes slow degradation in glass strength. This phenomenon involves multiple physics and is very challenging to predict. In this work, we introduce a novel multiphysics model for subcritical crack growth in glass. This model considers water-assisted stress relaxation, stress-dependent chemical reaction between water and glass, diffusion of water to the crack tip, and reaction-driven slow crack growth. Stress relaxation is achieved by using a Prony series in the bond-based peridynamic viscoelastic model, and a new bond breakage criterion based on the concentration of reaction product is introduced. A displacement-loaded double beam with a pre-crack is used to obtain the crack velocity vs. stress intensity factor (v-K) curve. With proper simplifications and assumptions, v-K curves obtained from the model successfully reproduced their typical patterns in experiments. This model will help us better understand fundamental mechanisms and make predictions for subcritical crack growth in glass.