Fracture precursors in disordered systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates fracture precursors in a disordered lattice model under stress, revealing singular behaviors and power-law avalanche distributions consistent with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a 2D lattice model with bond disorder to analyze fracture precursors and their critical behavior under stress-controlled conditions.

Findings

Cumulative energy of precursors does not diverge at the critical point.

Derivative of precursor energy shows singular behavior at the critical point.

Avalanche size distribution follows a power-law with an exponent close to experimental values.

Abstract

A two-dimensional lattice model with bond disorder is used to investigate the fracture behaviour under stress-controlled conditions. Although the cumulative energy of precursors does not diverge at the critical point, its derivative with respect to the control parameter (reduced stress) exhibits a singular behaviour. Our results are nevertheless compatible with previous experimental findings, if one restricts the comparison to the (limited) range accessible in the experiment. A power-law avalanche distribution is also found with an exponent close to the experimental values.