ABSTRACT
Fracture mechanics in its most elemental form introduced by Griffith defines the irreversible change of energy between two equilibrium states at constant loading. This particular equilibrium nature permits the use of Monte Carlo sampling for evaluating the energy change introduced by fracture, as well as energy release rate and its critical value, the fracture energy, from fluctuations. This is in short the idea of fluctuation-based fracture mechanics in the semigrand canonical ensemble (SGCMC). Herein, we review recent developments of SGCMC, and show possible applications for heterogeneous materials and structures.
