Can Local Stress Enhancement Induce Stability in Fracture Processes? Part I: Apparent Stability

TL;DR

This paper investigates how local stress enhancement can appear to stabilize fracture processes, revealing that such stability is only apparent and arises from statistical effects rather than true stability.

Contribution

It demonstrates that apparent stability in local load sharing models is a statistical artifact, providing insights into fracture process behaviors beyond fiber bundle models.

Findings

Local load sharing models show apparent stability due to sample averaging.

The apparent stability is a statistical effect, not true stability.

This phenomenon is likely general across fracture processes.

Abstract

By comparing the evolution of the local and equal load sharing fiber bundle models, we point out the paradoxical result that stresses seem to make the local load sharing model stable when the equal load sharing model is not. We explain this behavior by demonstrating that it is only an apparent stability in the local load sharing model, which originates from a statistical effect due to sample averaging. Even though we use the fiber bundle model to demonstrate the apparent stability, we argue that it is a more general feature of fracture processes.