Tuning load redistribution and damage near heterogeneous interfaces

We investigate interface failure of model materials representing architected thin films in contact with heterogeneous substrates. We find that, while systems with statistically isotropic distributions of impurities derive their fracture strength from the ability to develop rough detachment fronts, materials with hierarchical microstructures confine failure near a prescribed surface, where crack growth is arrested and crack surface correlations are suppressed. We develop a theory of network Green’s functions for the systems at hand, and we find that the ability of hierarchical microstructures to control failure mode and locations comes at no performance cost in terms of peak stress and specific work of failure and derives from the quenched local anistotropy of the elastic interaction kernel.