TY - JOUR T1 - A Model for the Quasi-Static Growth of Brittle Fractures: Existence and Approximation Results JF - Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 162 (2002) 101-135 Y1 - 2002 A1 - Gianni Dal Maso A1 - Rodica Toader AB - We give a precise mathematical formulation of a variational model for the irreversible quasi-static evolution of brittle fractures proposed by G.A. Francfort and J.-J. Marigo, and based on Griffith\\\'s theory of crack growth. In the two-dimensional case we prove an existence result for the quasi-static evolution and show that the total energy is an absolutely continuous function of time, although we can not exclude that the bulk energy and the surface energy may present some jump discontinuities. This existence result is proved by a time discretization process, where at each step a global energy minimization is performed, with the constraint that the new crack contains all cracks formed at the previous time steps. This procedure provides an effective way to approximate the continuous time evolution. PB - Springer UR - http://hdl.handle.net/1963/3056 U1 - 1277 U2 - Mathematics U3 - Functional Analysis and Applications ER -