6533b873fe1ef96bd12d59b7

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Dimensional effects in dynamic fragmentation of brittle materials.

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description

It has been shown previously that dynamic fragmentation of brittle $D$-dimensional objects in a $D$-dimensional space gives rise to a power-law contribution to the fragment-size distribution with a universal scaling exponent $2\ensuremath{-}1∕D$. We demonstrate that in fragmentation of two-dimensional brittle objects in three-dimensional space, an additional fragmentation mechanism appears, which causes scale-invariant secondary breaking of existing fragments. Due to this mechanism, the power law in the fragment-size distribution has now a scaling exponent of $\ensuremath{\sim}1.17$.