On the universality of fracture surface roughness

¹ Department of Applied Mathematics, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University - Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
² Department of Mathematics, University of Melbourne - Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia
³ CSIRO Division of Petroleum Resources, PO Box 3000 Glen Waverley, VIC 3150, Australia

Received: 14 February 1995
Accepted: 23 February 1996

Abstract

We measure the roughness of fracture surfaces generated in uniaxial tension for model materials in two and three dimensions. We study the effect of disorder, of anisotropy of material properties and of dimensionality on surface roughness. Although the roughness exponent ζ is always found within a narrow range, its value systematically decreases as the extent of disorder is increased. For anisotropic materials the scaling properties are found to be independent of the orientation. These results indicate that the scaling properties of the fracture surface are not universal, but depend, albeit weakly, on material properties. While values of the roughness exponent ζ are independent of dimension, differences in the fracture morphology and in the breakdown characteristics are noted.