MULTIFRAC · Multiscale Methods for Fracture

The objective of this project is to setup and strengthen international collaborations in the field of 'multiscale modelling for fracture'. The scientific goal is to get a better understanding of how materials fail and to develop better predictive tools for Engineering applications. This requires the combination of knowledge from different areas, i.e. Computational Mechanics, Computational Material Science and Experimental Testing. The partners ideally complement their associated expertise. The European partners have an extensive experience on modelling material failure on the continuum level while the Indian partner has focused on atomistic simulations for several years. The partner from South Africa complements the project with his experience in experimental testing. Our associated partner from the US is one of the most famous researchers in the field of Computational Mechanics and Modelling Material Failure.The project is divided into five work packages(including the management work package) that bridges three different length scales from micro-scale over meso-scale to macro-scale. The goal is to develop effective multi-scale methods to model fracture on these three different scales and to apply the methods to composite materials. Therefore, three work packages are devoted to develop the theoretical framework and its extension to composite materials. The fourth work package aims to close the gap and validate the numerical results through experiments. We believe to significantly push forward the state of the art in that field with the proposed collaboration.