Croissance d'une fissure dans un gel de rétraction

A thin, planar crack, inside a swollen gel is initially filled with air, and then exposed to a has solvent S, under a given pressure head p 0 . The gel shrinks and the crack opens up. We predict a well defined propagation speed for the tip of the opened region, proportional to p 0 1/2 . For p 0 =1 atm we expect c∼10 cm/s