Modern topics and challenges in dynamic fracture

Abstract The field of dynamic fracture has been enlivened over the last 5 years or so by a series of remarkable accomplishments in different fields—earthquake science, atomistic (classical and quantum) simulations, novel laboratory experiments, materials modeling, and continuum mechanics. Important concepts either discovered for the first time or elaborated in new ways reveal wider significance. Here the separate streams of the literature of this progress are reviewed comparatively to highlight commonality and contrasts in the mechanics and physics. Much of the value of the new work resides in the new questions it has raised, which suggests profitable areas for research in the next few years and beyond. From the viewpoint of fundamental science, excitement is greatest in the struggle to probe the character of dynamic fracture at the atomic scale, using Newtonian or quantum mechanics as appropriate (a qualifier to be debated!). But lively interest is also directed towards modeling and experimentation at macroscales, including the geological, where the science of fracture is pulled at once by fundamental issues, such as the curious effects of friction, and the structural, where dynamic effects are essential to proper design or certification and even in manufacture.