Implementation aspects of the bridging scale method and application to intersonic crack propagation

The major purpose of this work is to investigate the performance of the bridging scale method (BSM), a multiscale simulation framework for the dynamic, concurrent coupling of atomistics to continua, in capturing shear-dominant failure. The shear-dominant failure process considered in this work is intersonic crack propagation along a weak plane in an elastic material, similar to the seminal molecular dynamics (MD) simulations by Abraham and Gao (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2000; 84(14):3113–3116). We show that the BSM simulations accurately capture the essential physics of the intersonic crack propagation, including the formation of a daughter crack and the sudden acceleration of the crack to a velocity exceeding the material shear wave speed. It is also demonstrated that the non-reflecting boundary condition can adequately dissipate the strongly localized wave formed by the Mach cone after the crack accelerates beyond the material shear wave speed. Finally, we provide the algorithm for our implementation of the BSM, as well as the code used to determine the damping kernels via a newly adopted technique which is less expensive than previous methods. Copyright q 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd