Earthquake-Like Avalanches in Compression of Ductile Porous Materials

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that in ductile porous materials, complex avalanche dynamics driven by shear-banding interactions can replicate fundamental seismic laws, highlighting the role of local plastic slip in seismic phenomena.

Contribution

It reveals that shear-banding interactions in ductile materials produce avalanche behaviors that follow key seismic laws, extending understanding beyond brittle fracture models.

Findings

Avalanche dynamics in ductile materials follow Gutenberg-Richter law.

Shear-banding interactions reproduce Omori and productivity laws.

Local plastic slip is essential for seismic law replication.

Abstract

Earthquakes are complex phenomena characterized by some fundamental seismic laws. However, under the framework of brittle fracture in disordered material, these universal scaling behaviors, especially for critical exponents, are still far from understood. In this Letter, we study avalanches in compression of a nonbrittle material, the ductile metallic glass foam. In addition to elasticity and disorder, more complex inelastic effects can be also introduced by strain localization in cellular structures. We show that different from brittle fracture, the additional shear-banding interactions result in novel avalanche dynamics which successfully reproduce the most fundamental seismic laws, including the Gutenberg-Richter law, the unified scaling law for the waiting times, Omori law, and the productivity law. Our results thus demonstrate that the local plastic slip, that also occurs in natural seismicity (such as strain localization in fault gouges), constitutes a necessary ingredient to account for the most fundamental seismic laws.