Solid Earth
Solid Earth
SE
Articles | Volume 10, issue 4
Articles | Volume 10, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/se-10-1385-2019
© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/se-10-1385-2019
© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Articles | Volume 10, issue 4
Research article
 | 
21 Aug 2019
Research article |  | 21 Aug 2019

What happens to fracture energy in brittle fracture? Revisiting the Griffith assumption

Timothy R. H. Davies, Maurice J. McSaveney, and Natalya V. Reznichenko

Download

Interactive discussion

Status: closed
Status: closed
AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
Printer-friendly Version - Printer-friendly version Supplement - Supplement

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
AR by Tim Davies on behalf of the Authors (25 Jul 2019)  Author's response   Manuscript 
ED: Publish as is (25 Jul 2019) by David Healy
ED: Publish as is (25 Jul 2019) by Susanne Buiter (Executive editor)
AR by Tim Davies on behalf of the Authors (26 Jul 2019)  Manuscript 
Download

The requested paper has a corresponding corrigendum published. Please read the corrigendum first before downloading the article.

Short summary
Griffith (1921) assumed that energy used to create new surface area by breaking intact rock immediately becomes surface energy which is not available for further breakage. Our lab data disprove this assumption; we created much more new surface area, 90 % on submicron fragments, than the energy involved should allow. As technology allows ever smaller fragments to be measured, continued use of the Griffith assumption will lead to incorrect energy budgets for earthquakes and rock avalanches.
Read more