Hot cracks in rubber: Origin of the giant toughness of rubberlike materials

We study crack propagation in rubberlike materials and show that the nonuniform temperature distribution which occurs in the vicinity of the crack tip has a profound influence on the crack propagation, and may strongly enhance the crack propagation energy G(v) for high crack velocities v. At very low crack-tip velocities, the heat produced at the crack tip can diffuse away, but already at moderate crack-tip velocities a very large temperature increase occurs close to the crack tip resulting in a "hot-crack" propagation regime. The transition between the low-speed regime and the hot-crack regime is very abrupt and may result in unstable crack motion, e.g., stick-slip motion or catastrophic failure.