Ionised media and fractures: application to cartilaginous tissues and oil industry

ionized media are ubiquitous in nature. Our body holds onto water through ionised macromolecules that bind water up to a 1000 times their own mass. Clays and shales do a similar trick in the geoworld. Localization of deformation and fractures are very common. Bore hole instability through fracture of swelling shales accounts for more than a billion dollar damage to the oil industry each year. Hernation of the intervertebral disc is a even more devastation problem in health. Our group approaches localization in such media through both experiments, numerical modelling and analytical modelling. Propagation of mode I and mode II cracks through ionized media is done by means of Partition of Unity in a multiphasic medium. The crack is a discontinuity of both the displacement as the chemical potential field. The results are validated by means of an analytical solution of dislocation in a swelling medium. Experimental verification requires confocal and two photon microscopy.