Pattern formation during diffusion limited transformations in solids

We develop a description of diffusion limited growth in solid-solid transformations, which are strongly influenced by elastic effects. Density differences and structural transformations provoke stresses at interfaces, which affect the phase equilibrium conditions. We formulate equations for the interface kinetics similar to dendritic growth and study the growth of a stable phase from a metastable solid in both a channel geometry and in free space. We perform sharp interface calculations based on Green's function methods and phase field simulations, supplemented by analytical investigations. For pure dilatational transformations we find a single growing finger with symmetry breaking at higher driving forces, whereas for shear transformations the emergence of twin structures can be favorable. We predict the steady state shapes and propagation velocities, which can be higher than in conventional dendritic growth.Comment: submitted to Philosophical Magazin

Theory of dendritic growth in the presence of lattice strain

Elastic effects due to lattice strain modify the local equilibrium condition at the solid-solid interface compared to the classical dendritic growth. Both, the thermal and the elastic fields are eliminated by the Green's function techniques and a closed nonlinear integro-differential equation for the evolution of the interface is derived. In the case of pure dilatation, the elastic effects lead only to a trivial shift of the transition temperature while in the case of shear transitions, dendritic patterns are found even for isotropic surface energy

Nonlinear Two-Dimensional Green's Function in Smectics

The problem of the strain of smectics subjected to a force distributed over a line in the basal plane has been solved

Crack growth by surface diffusion in viscoelastic media

We discuss steady state crack growth in the spirit of a free boundary problem. It turns out that mode I and mode III situations are very different from each other: In particular, mode III exhibits a pronounced transition towards unstable crack growth at higher driving forces, and the behavior close to the Griffith point is determined entirely through crack surface dissipation, whereas in mode I the fracture energy is renormalized due to a remaining finite viscous dissipation. Intermediate mixed-mode scenarios allow steady state crack growth with higher velocities, leading to the conjecture that mode I cracks can be unstable with respect to a rotation of the crack front line