Supershear damage propagation and sub-Rayleigh crack growth from edge-on impact: A peridynamic analysis

•New peridynamic model for brittle fracture in cubic polycrystalline ceramics.•Model predicts failure fronts and fragmentation caused by edge-on impact.•Autonomous transition from fast failure front to slow, localized cracks.•Failure front supershear propagation and sub-Rayleigh crack growth explained. [Display omitted] Edge-on impact experiments on AlON, a transparent ceramic with superior ballistic performance, show combined intergranular and transgranular fracture. An initial fast-propagating damage front transitions into slower-propagating localized cracks. We develop a peridynamic model for polycrystalline AlON to investigate the failure evolution observed in experiments. We use a computational polycrystalline structure with the same average grain size as the samples used in experiments. The peridynamic model helps explain the reasons behind the observed failure front supershear propagation speed (higher than 2 times the shear wave speed), and the subsequent transition to sub-Rayleigh propagating localized cracks. The computed propagation speeds for the damage front, and the cracks that emanate from it, match very well those measured in experiments. Elastic anisotropy, material microstructure, and brittle failure are the only ingredients used here to determine damage evolution in edge-on impact on brittle polycrystalline materials, under no confinement. Other possible dissipation mechanisms, like twinning, plasticity, friction, are not included in the model. These are likely second-order effects in the evolution of damage and failure for this material and at these impact speeds.