In a paper published in Nature Physics, Northeastern University Department of Physics Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor Alain Karma, in collaboration with his postdoctoral research associate Chih-Hung Chen and Professor Eran Bouchbinder of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Chemical Physics Department, discovered the mechanism that causes cracks to behave strangely when they spread very rapidly in brittle materials. The results of this study will help researchers better understand how fragile materials, such as glass, ceramic, polymers, and bone break—often catastrophically—and how to better design materials to avoid failure.

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“Instability in Dynamic Fracture and the Failure of the Classical Theory of Cracks”