Fracture Propagation Using a Phase Field Approach

Phase field models have received a lot of attention during the last 20 years and they have reached maturity, being in the last years ubiquitous, finding nice examples in a range of applications in physical sciences and engineering, from the classical spinodal decomposition in multiphase flows to qualitative studies of motility in metastatic tumor cells. In this paper, we give a brief introduction to the theory of the method and present a review of some striking applications in order to show the huge potential and versatility of the technique. In this work, we are interested in very specific problems related to applications in energy storage and fracture dynamics. This research began by using a simple model to study the propagation of fractures in elastic homogeneous materials and eventually evolved into a coupled model that includes fracture propagation and flow in elastic-porous media.