Crackling dynamics in the mechanical response of knitted fabrics, Version 2

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that knitted fabrics exhibit crackling noise characterized by avalanche-like events during mechanical deformation, with statistical properties similar to earthquakes and amorphous materials, revealing their complex out-of-equilibrium behavior.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of scale-invariant crackling dynamics in knitted fabrics, linking their microstructure to avalanche statistics and broadening understanding of out-of-equilibrium systems.

Findings

Avalanche size distributions follow power laws.

Force fluctuations correlate with deformation avalanches.

Knitted fabrics serve as model systems for studying crackling noise.

Abstract

Crackling noise, which occurs in a wide range of situations, is characterized by discrete events of various sizes, often correlated in the form of avalanches. We report experimental evidence that the mechanical response of knitted fabric displays such broadly distributed events both in the force signal and in the deformation field, with statistics analogous to that of earthquakes or soft amorphous materials. A knit consists of a regular network of frictional contacts, linked by the elasticity of the yarn. When deformed, the fabric displays spatially extended avalanche-like yielding events resulting from collective inter-yarn contact slips. We measure the size distribution of these avalanches, at the stitch level from the analysis of non-elastic displacement fields, and externally from force fluctuations. The two measurements yield consistent power law distributions reminiscent of those found in other avalanching systems. Our study shows that a knitted fabric is not only a thread-based metamaterial with highly sought after mechanical properties, but also an original, model system, with topologically protected structural order, where intermittent, scale-invariant response emerges from minimal ingredients, and thus a significant landmark in the study of out-of-equilibrium universality.