BRITTLE FRAGMENTATION OF AN EXPANDING RING BY MOLECULAR DYNAMICS

In this paper, the brittle fragmentation of an expanding ring is numerically studied by a simple atomistic model. We investigate the statistical distribution of fragment spanned over a wide range of strain rates when damage related to broken bond reaches a steady state. It is shown that at low strain rate limited number of heavy fragments can be generated because of anisotropic behavior while for high strain rate fragment can be well fitted with Weibull distribution. The physical mechanism of fragmentation process reveals that damage accompanying with numerous microcracks is found to initiate in the inner regime of the expanding ring. Furthermore, we discuss the effect of random defect on the fragmentation process.