Modeling dynamic crack growth in quasicrystals: Unraveling the role of phonon–phason coupling

In this work, we employed the phase-field fracture (PFF) model for dynamic brittle fracture in quasicrystals (QCs). The dynamic PFF formulation is derived using both elastodynamics and elasto-hydrodynamic theory. The temporal discretization is achieved using an implicit generalized-α method, which is unconditionally stable for a particular choice of constants. The model incorporates two distinct crack driving forces: (a) the contribution of elastic strain energy from both phonon and phason fields and (b) the contribution solely from the elastic energy associated with the phonon field. To validate the implementation of QCs, we have conducted benchmarking against recent results in the literature, particularly in the context of quasi-static loading. We addressed various paradigmatic case studies to demonstrate the dynamic crack nucleation and propagation in planar 2D decagonal QCs, with a primary emphasis on understanding the interplay between phonon and phason fields. Phason walls, representing low-energy crack paths resulting from atomic rearrangements, play a significant role in crack propagation by introducing an additional energy component. Notably, increasing the phonon–phason coupling constant expedites both crack initiation and propagation. Furthermore, variations in the phonon–phason coupling parameter result in different crack trajectories, observed in both uniaxial and biaxial loading scenarios. The developed code can be downloaded from https://github.com/Hirshikesh/Quasicrystal.git.