Failure Processes in Elastic Fiber Bundles

TL;DR

This paper reviews the fiber bundle model, a simple yet powerful framework for understanding failure processes in materials and complex systems, emphasizing statistical physics concepts like criticality and universality.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of different load redistribution mechanisms in fiber bundle models from a statistical physics perspective, highlighting their relevance to various failure phenomena.

Findings

Explains critical behavior and universality in failure processes.

Connects fiber bundle models to real-world phenomena like earthquakes and traffic jams.

Discusses the role of fluctuations in failure dynamics.

Abstract

The fiber bundle model describes a collection of elastic fibers under load. the fibers fail successively and for each failure, the load distribution among the surviving fibers change. Even though very simple, the model captures the essentials of failure processes in a large number of materials and settings. We present here a review of fiber bundle model with different load redistribution mechanism from the point of view of statistics and statistical physics rather than materials science, with a focus on concepts such as criticality, universality and fluctuations. We discuss the fiber bundle model as a tool for understanding phenomena such as creep, and fatigue, how it is used to describe the behavior of fiber reinforced composites as well as modelling e.g. network failure, traffic jams and earthquake dynamics.