Seismiclike organization of avalanches in a driven long-range elastic string as a paradigm of brittle cracks

Jonathan Bares (1) , Daniel Bonamy (2) , Alberto Rosso (3)

1 Servex - Moyens expérimentaux
2 SPHYNX - Systèmes Physiques Hors-équilibre, hYdrodynamique, éNergie et compleXes
3 LPTMS - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques

Crack growth in heterogeneous materials sometimes exhibits crackling dynamics, made of successive impulselike events with specific scale-invariant time and size organization reminiscent of earthquakes. Here, we examine this dynamics in a model which identifies the crack front with a long-range elastic line driven in a random potential. We demonstrate that, under some circumstances, fracture grows intermittently, via scale-free impulse organized into aftershock sequences obeying the fundamental laws of statistical seismology. We examine the effects of the driving rate and system overall stiffness (unloading factor) onto the scaling exponents and cutoffs associated with the time and size organization. We unravel the specific conditions required to observe a seismiclike organization in the crack propagation problem. Beyond failure problems, implications of these results to other crackling systems are finally discussed.

Mots clés: seismicity; brittle fracture; crackling; pinning depinning; time clustering

Domaines: Mécanique [physics.med-ph]

Jonathan Bares, Daniel Bonamy, Alberto Rosso. Seismiclike organization of avalanches in a driven long-range elastic string as a paradigm of brittle cracks. Physical Review E , 2019, 100 (2), pp.023001. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevE.100.023001⟩. ⟨hal-02269109⟩