Bridging perturbation and variational approaches in brittle fracture

We present a variational reduced-order model for three-dimensional coplanar propagation of sharp cracks in heterogeneous, perfectly brittle solids under mixed-mode I+II+III loading. The approach connects the variational fracture formulation of Francfort and Marigo (1998) and the perturbation theory of Rice (1985) by computing equilibrium crack-front configurations through minimization of the total energy defined as the sum of (i) the elastic potential energy, evaluated asymptotically from front deformations, and (ii) the dissipated energy, set by the fracture energy field. The potential energy and its derivatives are evaluated efficiently using the Fast Fourier Transform. The resulting nonconvex box-constrained minimization problem is solved with a matrix-free Newton conjugate gradient algorithm with a trust region and physics-based preconditioning, enforcing irreversibility while resolving energy barriers and long-range elastic interactions. We validate our implementation against newly derived analytical solutions. We then perform 116,000 large-scale simulations of tensile and shear crack propagation in disordered media to quantify the impact of finite-size effects, disorder intensity, and mode mixity. The simulations reproduce the transition from smooth to intermittent crack growth, and show that mode mixity has limited influence on the onset of intermittency but induces quasi-elliptic fronts in mixed II+III loading. They reveal a size-dependent crossover from disorder-induced weakening to toughening controlled by the emergence of depinning instabilities.