Fracture mechanics and crack propagation in fragile matter

Using simulations and theory, we investigate fracture processes and the formation of cracks in near-isostatic networks derived from jammed packings in both the quasi-static limit and with molecular dynamics. We study how localized cracks in networks with high coordination number become randomly distributed and isolated bond breakages near the isostatic point and suggest that this may be related to the scaling of the size of the process zone with characteristic lengths from jamming.