Spiral cracks in drying precipitates

Abstract

We investigate the formation of spiral crack patterns during the desiccation of thin layers of precipitates in contact with a substrate. This symmetry-breaking fracturing mode is found to arise naturally not from torsion forces, but from a propagating stress front induced by the fold-up of the fragments. We model their formation mechanism using a coarse-grain model for fragmentation and successfully reproduce the spiral cracks. Fittings of experimental and simulation data show that the spirals are logarithmic, corresponding to constant deviation from a circular crack path. Theoretical aspects of the logarithmic spirals are discussed. In particular we show that this occurs generally when the crack speed is proportional to the propagating speed of stress front.