Events

Date and Time: Monday, October 2, 2017 at 3:00 p.m.

Speaker:  Dr. Chad M. Landis, Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin.

Title of Seminar: “Phase-field Modeling of Fracture: Brittle, Ductile, and Fluid Driven”

Abstract:

Over the last decade, the phase-field approach to fracture has been shown to be a useful tool for modeling complex crack path evolution. Features including the nucleation, turning, branching, and merging of cracks as a result of quasi-static mechanical and dynamic loadings are captured without the need for extra constitutive rules for these phenomena. This presentation will provide a brief summary of the phase-field approach to microstructural evolution and then will focus on its application to fracture mechanics problems. I will present some recent work on modeling crack path evolution during dynamic brittle failure as well as extensions of the phase-field modeling approach that account for some of the phenomenological features of ductile crack growth. Finally, I will discuss some of the challenges associated with accounting for fluid flow within cracks represented by the phase-field method. The application of hydraulic fracturing involves the injection of fluid into a perforated wellbore with the intention of fracturing the surrounding reservoir and stimulating its overall production. This process involves the coupling of fluid flow with material failure, which must account for the interactions of several cracks, both natural and man-made. A continuum framework for fluid flow through a damaging porous medium able to represent the processes and interactions that occur during hydraulic fracturing will be presented. Several benchmark solutions will be discussed to demonstrate the predicted behaviors and the accuracy of the method.

Biography:   

Dr. Chad Landis received his bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and business from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994.  He then went on to earn his MS (1997) and PhD (1999) degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara.  After spending a little over a year at Harvard University as a post-doc, Landis then went to Rice University where he was a member of the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science faculty from 2000-2006.  He now resides in Austin, Texas as a professor in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics.

Dr. Chad Landis’ research focuses on continuum modeling and numerical simulation of the mechanical, electrical, magnetic and thermal behavior of materials.  His specific interests are on coupled physics problems including active/smart materials such as ferroelectrics and shape memory alloys.  Landis also has a broad range of interests in the mechanics of materials, including fracture mechanics, plasticity, micromechanics, composites, and finite element methods.