Statistical Physics of Fracture and Earthquake

TL;DR

This paper explores the statistical physics underlying fracture and earthquakes, focusing on fracture nucleation, its extreme value statistics in disordered materials, and models of earthquakes based on fiber bundles and fractal overlaps.

Contribution

It introduces a unified statistical physics framework for understanding fracture and earthquake phenomena through novel models and analysis.

Findings

Fracture nucleation follows specific extreme value statistics.

Fiber bundle models capture key aspects of material failure.

Fractal overlap models provide insights into earthquake dynamics.

Abstract

This chapter introduces the fracture nucleation process, their (extreme) statistics in disordered solids, in fiber bundle models, and in the two fractal overlap models of earthquake.