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Fracture mechanics of methane clathrate hydrates

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Abstract

Fundamental mechanics of gas hydrates is of importance to evaluating geomechanical and geotechnical properties of gas hydrate deposits, but it remains largely unexplored yet due to insufficient direct experimental techniques and high-quality of gas hydrate samples. Here, classic molecular dynamic (MD) simulations are used to study the fracture mechanics of three main methane clathrate hydrates of sI, sII and sH types. The results show that the mechanical properties of those three methane clathrate hydrates are intrinsically different and are degraded by the presence of nanocracks. They show brittle facture and different fracture toughness. In terms of energy release rate, they are ranked as \(\text {sH}\!\!>\!\!\text {sI}>\!\!\text {sII}\). Moreover, the three methane clathrate hydrates with nanocracks can be explained by a modified Griffith criterion. Moreover, it is intriguingly identified tip amorphization during the crack propagation process of the three methane clathrate hydrates, and sH methane clathrate hydrate with specific nanocrack exhibits slower crack propagation than other two methane clathrate hydrates.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 11772278, 11904300 and 12002350) and the Jiangxi Provincial Outstanding Young Talents Program (Grant 20192BCBL23029). We thank Y. Yu and Z. Xu who are from Information and Network Center of Xiamen University for the technical help of the high-performance computer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Research Institute for Biomimetics and Soft Matter, Jiujiang Research Institute and Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory for Soft Functional Materials Research, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Jinjie Liu, Ke Xu, Li Yang, Yanwen Lin, Xuezheng Gao, Zhisen Zhang & Jianyang Wu

  2. Key Laboratory of Marine Materials and Related Technologies, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Marine Materials and Protective Technologies, Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo, 315201, China

    Tong Li

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  1. Jinjie Liu
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  5. Tong Li
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Correspondence to Zhisen Zhang or Jianyang Wu.

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Executive Editor: Yuejie Wei.

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Liu, J., Xu, K., Yang, L. et al. Fracture mechanics of methane clathrate hydrates. Acta Mech. Sin. 37, 1387–1394 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-021-01105-y

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