Influence of temperature and crack-tip speed on crack propagation in elastic solids

I study the influence of temperature and the crack-tip velocity of bond breaking at the crack tip in rubber-like materials. Bond breaking is considered as a stress-aided thermally activated process and results in an effective crack propagation energy, which increases strongly with decreasing temperature or increasing crack-tip speed. This effect is particularly important for adhesive (interfacial) crack propagation but less important for cohesive (bulk) crack propagation owing to the much larger bond-breaking energies in the latter case. For adhesive cracks, the theory results are consistent with adhesion measurements for silicone rubber polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) in contact with silica glass surfaces. For cohesive cracks, the theory agrees well with experimental results PDMS films chemically bound to silanized glass.