Notre nouvelle approche expérimentale consiste à étudier la fissuration de matériaux mous, principalement des gels polymériques et colloidaux, qui ont des tailles microstructurales micrométriques. Cette augmentation de la taille microscopique va avoir pour conséquence d’augmenter la taille de la zone de process et va rendre son observation plus facile avec des moyens standard de microscopie (à transmission et confocale).Pour se faire, nous avons mis au point un nouveau dispositif expérimental pour étudier la propagation de fissures dans des matériaux mous. Cette expérience permet de faire croître une fissure de manière contrôlée dans un échantillon mou et d’inspecter la pointe de fissure à haute résolution pour des fissures se propageant entre 1 µm/s and 1cm/s. En travaillant avec des gels de polymère physiques, nous avons analyse la forme de fissure ainsi que les champs de déplacement proches pointe (en utilisant des techniques de corrélation d’image) à petites et grandes échelles et à différentes vitesses. Nous avons montré qu’il existait une séparation d’échelles spatiales entre les échelles où l’élasticité linéaire s’applique, les échelles auxquelles les non linéarités émergent et les échelles auxquelles la dissipation se produit. Cette dernière échelle n’a pas pu être investigué dans le cas de gels polymériques. De récentes expériences sur des gels colloïdaux, ayant une longueur micro-structurale plus grande que celle des gels polymers, montre que nous sommes capables de sonder en temps réel les échelles d’endommagement lors de la fissuration. / Our novel experimental approach consists in studying fracture mechanics of soft materials, mainly polymer and colloidal gels, which have microstructures with large typical length scales. This increase in the microscopic length scale will consequently increase the typical size of the process zone and make its observation easier with standard microscopy techniques (optical or confocal).To do so, we designed a novel experimental device to study crack propagation in such soft materials. This experiment enables us to grow a unique crack in a controlled way in a soft specimen and to look at the crack tip at high magnification for crack velocities between 1 µm/s and 1cm/s. Working on physical polymer gels, we analysed the crack shape and crack displacement fields (using Digital Image Correlation) at large and intermediate scales for various velocities. We realized there was a separation of scales between the scale at which LEFM applies, the scale at which elastic nonlinearities emerge and the scale at which dissipation occurs. This last scale could not be investigated with the polymer gel. Recent experiments on colloidal gels, which have a microscopic length scale bigger than the one of polymer gels, show that we are able to probe damage at the microstructural scale.

The investigation of failure in brittle materials, subjected to dynamic transient loading conditions, represents one of the ongoing challenges in the mechanics community. Progresses on this front are required to support the design of engineering components which are employed in applications involving extreme operational regimes. To this purpose, this thesis is devoted to the development of a framework which provides the capabilities to model how crack patterns form and evolve in brittle materials and how they affect the quantitative description of failure. The proposed model is developed within the context of diffusive interfaces which are at the basis of a new class of theories named phase field models. In this work, a set of additional features is proposed to expand their domain of applicability to the modelling of (i) rate and (ii) pressure dependent effects. The path towards the achievement of the first goal has been traced on the desire to account for micro-inertia effects associated with high rates of loading. Pressure dependency has been addressed by postulating a mode-of-failure transition law whose scaling depends upon the local material triaxiality. The governing equations have been derived within a thermodynamically-consistent framework supplemented by the employment of a micro-forces balance approach. The numerical implementation has been carried out within an updated lagrangian finite element scheme with explicit time integration. A series of benchmarks will be provided to appraise the model capabilities in predicting rate-pressure-dependent crack initiation and propagation. Results will be compared against experimental evidences which closely resemble the boundary value problems examined in this work. Concurrently, the design and optimization of a complimentary, improved, experimental characterization platform, based on the split Hopkinson pressure bar, will be presented as a mean for further validation and calibration.