Scaling with respect to disorder in time-to-failure

TL;DR

This paper investigates a dynamical rupture model in disordered media with long-range elasticity, revealing that rupture behaves as a critical phenomenon characterized by a universal scaling law, regardless of disorder amplitude.

Contribution

It demonstrates that rupture in such systems is a critical transition with a universal scaling law, supported by extensive numerical simulations.

Findings

Macroscopic modulus scales with time-to-rupture and disorder amplitude.

Numerical data collapse onto a single master curve.

Rupture is identified as a genuine critical phenomenon.

Abstract

We revisit a simple dynamical model of rupture in random media with long-range elasticity to test whether rupture can be seen as a first-order or a critical transition. We find a clear scaling of the macroscopic modulus as a function of time-to-rupture and of the amplitude of the disorder, which allows us to collapse neatly the numerical simulations over more than five decades in time and more than one decade in disorder amplitude onto a single master curve. We thus conclude that, at least in this model, dynamical rupture in systems with long-range elasticity is a genuine critical phenomenon occurring as soon as the disorder is non-vanishing.