Publications by Fabian Barras | EPFL Graph Search

The dynamics of unsteady frictional slip pulses

Self-healing slip pulses are major spatiotemporal failure modes of frictional systems, featuring a characteristic size L(t) and a propagation velocity c(p)(t) (t is time). Here, we develop a theory of slip pulses in realistic rate- and state-dependent fric ...

National Academy of Sciences2023

On the scale dependence in the dynamics of frictional rupture: Constant fracture energy versus size-dependent breakdown work

Fabian Barras, Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Federica Paglialunga, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain

Potential energy stored during the inter-seismic period by tectonic loading around faults is released during earthquakes as radiated energy, frictional dissipation and fracture energy. The latter is of first importance since it is expected to control the n ...

2022

cRacklet: a spectral boundary integral method library for interfacial rupture simulation

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, Thibault Didier Roch

The study of dynamically propagating rupture along interfaces is of prime importance in various fields and system sizes, including tribology (nm to m), engineering (mm to m) and geophysics (m to km) (Armstrong-Hélouvry et al., 1994; Ben-Zion, 2008; Vanossi ...

2022

Onset of sliding across scales: How the contact topography impacts frictional strength

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, Ramin Aghababaei

When two solids start rubbing together, frictional sliding initiates in the wake of slip fronts propagating along their surfaces in contact. This macroscopic rupture dynamics can be successfully mapped on the elastodynamics of a moving shear crack. However ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021

Crack front waves: A 3D dynamic response to a local perturbation of tensile and shear cracks

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, Damien Spielmann, Fatima-Ezzahra Fekak

Crack front waves are long-lived perturbations propagating along the crack front. They are triggered by heterogeneities on the crack plane, as for instance tough asperities, which disturb the crack front shape. Crack front waves are thought to leave a trac ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2020

The emergence of crack-like behavior of frictional rupture: Edge singularity and energy balance

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, Thibault Didier Roch

The failure of frictional interfaces - the process of frictional rupture - is widely assumed to feature crack-like properties, with far-reaching implications for various disciplines, ranging from engineering tribology to earthquake physics. An important co ...

ELSEVIER2020

Finite element modeling of dynamic frictional rupture with rate and state friction

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, Roozbeh Rezakhani, Michael Ludovic Brun

Numerous laboratory experiments have demonstrated the dependence of the friction coefficient on the interfacial slip rate and the contact history, a behavior generically called rate and state friction. Although numerical models have been widely used for an ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2020

Initial effective stress controls the nature of earthquakes

Fabian Barras, Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Modern geophysics highlights that the slip behaviour response of faults is variable in space and time and can result in slow or fast ruptures. However, the origin of this variation of the rupture velocity in nature as well as the physics behind it is still ...

Nature Research2020

Emergence of Cracklike Behavior of Frictional Rupture: The Origin of Stress Drops

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, Thibault Didier Roch

The process of frictional rupture, i.e., the failure of frictional systems, abounds in the technological and natural world around us, ranging from squealing car brake pads to earthquakes along geological faults. A general framework for understanding and in ...

American Physical Society2019

Unstable Slip Pulses and Earthquake Nucleation as a Nonequilibrium First-Order Phase Transition

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras

The onset of rapid slip along initially quiescent frictional interfaces, the process of “earthquake nucleation,” and dissipative spatiotemporal slippage dynamics play important roles in a broad range of physical systems. Here we first show that interfaces ...

2018

When dynamic cracks meet disorder: A journey along the fracture process zone

Fabian Barras

The onset of earthquakes along crustal faults, the triggering of slab avalanches or the break of a wine glass are all serious problems driven by the propagation of a dynamic rupture front. Our physical understanding of this ubiquitous phenomenon is however ...

EPFL2018

Supershear bursts in the propagation of a tensile crack in linear elastic material

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras, René Carpaij

Since the early years of the linear elastic theory of fracture [linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM)], scientists have sought to understand and predict how fast cracks grow in a material or slip fronts propagate along faults. While shear cracks can tra ...

2018

Interplay between Process Zone and Material Heterogeneities for Dynamic Cracks

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras

Using an elastodynamic boundary integral formulation coupled with a cohesive model, we study the problem of a dynamic rupture front propagating along an heterogeneous plane. We show that small-scale heterogeneities facilitate the supershear transition of a ...

American Physical Society2017

A study of frictional contact in dynamic fracture along bimaterial interfaces

David Simon Kammer, Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras

We investigate numerically the dynamic inplane propagation of a centered crack along bimaterial interfaces using a spectral formulation of the elastodynamic boundary integral equations. Particular attention is given to the effect of contact zones at the su ...

Springer Verlag2014