{"paper":{"title":"Capillary fracture of soft gels","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["nlin.PS","physics.flu-dyn"],"primary_cat":"cond-mat.soft","authors_text":"Joshua B. Bostwick, Karen E. Daniels","submitted_at":"2013-10-16T00:44:41Z","abstract_excerpt":"A liquid droplet resting on a soft gel substrate can deform that substrate to the point of material failure, whereby fractures develop on the gel surface that propagate outwards from the contact-line in a starburst pattern. In this paper, we characterize i) the initiation process in which the number of arms in the starburst is controlled by the ratio of surface tension contrast to the gel's elastic modulus and ii) the propagation dynamics showing that once fractures are initiated they propagate with a universal power law $L\\propto t^{3/4}$. We develop a model for crack initiation by treating t"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1310.4234","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}