Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34266959›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021

Nonsteady fracture of transient networks: The case of vitrimer.

Tong Shen, Zhaoqiang Song, Shengqiang Cai, Franck J Vernerey

Open access · bronzeAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
3.2field-weighted citation impact, top 8% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Fracture of liquid crystal elastomers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  3. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Tong ShenDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80302.
Zhaoqiang SongDepartment of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093.ORCID 0000-0001-9260-3447
Shengqiang CaiDepartment of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093; franck.vernerey@colorado.edu shqcai@ucsd.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-6852-7680
Franck J VernereyDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80302; franck.vernerey@colorado.edu shqcai@ucsd.edu.
University of California San Diego · USUniversity of Colorado Boulder · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

We have discovered a peculiar form of fracture that occurs in polymer network formed by covalent adaptable bonds. Due to the dynamic feature of the bonds, fracture of this network is rate dependent, and the crack propagates in a highly nonsteady manner. These phenomena cannot be explained by the existing fracture theories, most of which are based on steady-state assumption. To explain these peculiar characteristics, we first revisit the fundamental difference between the transient network and the covalent network in which we highlighted the transient feature of the cracks. We extend the current fracture criterion for crack initiation to a time-evolution scheme that allows one to track the nonsteady propagation of a crack. Through a combined experimental modeling effort, we show that fracture in transient networks is governed by two parameters: the Weissenberg number [Formula: see text] that defines the history path of crack-driving force and an extension parameter Z that tells how far a crack can grow. We further use our understanding to explain the peculiar experimental observation. To further leverage on this understanding, we show that one can "program" a specimen's crack extension dynamics by tuning the loading history.

Indexed as

bond exchange reactioncrack-driving forcenonsteady fractureviscoelasticityvitrimer

Identifiers

PMID34266959
PMCPMC8329667
OpenAlexW3179553833

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.