Avalanches and force drops in displacement-driven compression of porous glasses

TL;DR

This study investigates acoustic emissions and force drops during displacement-driven compression of porous glasses, revealing avalanche behavior and scale-invariance similar to earthquake dynamics, with power-law distributions of force drops.

Contribution

It demonstrates that displacement-driven compression of porous glasses exhibits avalanche phenomena and scale-invariant acoustic emissions, aligning with earthquake models and extending understanding of failure processes.

Findings

Acoustic emission energies follow Gutenberg-Richter law.

Force drops are power-law distributed and correlated with acoustic events.

Failure processes exhibit avalanche scale-invariance.

Abstract

Similarities between force-driven compression experiments of porous materials and earthquakes have been recently proposed. In this manuscript, we measure the acoustic emission during displacement-driven compression of a porous glass. The energy of acoustic-emission events shows that the failure process exhibits avalanche scale-invariance and therefore follows the Gutenberg-Richter law. The resulting exponents do not exhibit significant differences with respect the force-driven case. Furthermore, the force exhibits an avalanche-type behaviour for which the force drops are power-law distributed and correlated with the acoustic emission events.