Mode I fracture of a biopolymer gel: rate-dependent dissipation and large deformations disentangled

We have designed a new experimental setup able to investigate fracture of soft materials at small scales. At high crack velocity, where energy is mostly dissipated through viscoelastic processes, we observe an increasingly large high strain domain in the crack tip vicinity. Taking advantage of our ability to determine where linear elasticity breaks down, we derive a simple prediction for the evolution of the energy release rate with the crack velocity.