New experimental and numerical techniques to study the arrest and the restart of a crack under impact in transparent materials

The determination of relevant constitutive crack propagation laws under dynamic loading is a rather challenging exercise. In dynamic impact cases, the variations of propagation parameters and the extractions of crack positions are difficult tasks. This paper focuses on a methodology for assessing dynamic crack propagation laws under impact loading for transparent materials. Dynamic brittle fracture experiments are performed on polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) in which several crack arrest phases occur. Then, these experiments are numerically reproduced by using the eXtended Finite Element Method (X-FEM) in order to validate the algorithms and the criteria assumed.