Correlation length exponent in the three-dimensional fuse network

Inequality of avalanche sizes in models of fracture

Prediction of an imminent catastrophic event in a driven disordered system is of paramount importance-from the laboratory scale controlled fracture experiment to the largest scale of mechanical failure, i.e., earthquakes. It has long been conjectured that the statistical regularities in the energy emission time series mirror the "health" of such driven systems and hence have the potential for forecasting imminent catastrophe. Among other statistical regularities, a measure of how unequal avalanche sizes are is potentially a crucial indicator of imminent failure. The inequalities of avalanche sizes are quantified using inequality indices traditionally used in socioeconomic systems: the Gini index g, the Hirsch index h, and the Kolkata index k. It is shown analytically (for the mean-field case) and numerically (for the non-mean-field case) with models of quasi-brittle materials that the indices show universal behavior near the breaking points in such models and hence could serve as indicators of imminent breakdown of stressed disordered systems.

Role of the sample thickness in planar crack propagation

We study the effect of the sample thickness in planar crack front propagation in a disordered elastic medium using the random fuse model. We employ different loading conditions and we test their stability with respect to crack growth. We show that the thickness induces characteristic lengths in the stress enhancement factor in front of the crack and in the stress transfer function parallel to the crack. This is reflected by a thickness-dependent crossover scale in the crack front morphology that goes from from multiscaling to self-affine with exponents, in agreement with line depinning models and experiments. Finally, we compute the distribution of crack avalanches, which is shown to depend on the thickness and the loading mode.

Miscible viscous fingering in three dimensions: fractal-to-compact crossover and interfacial roughness

Using our standard pore-level model, we have extended our earlier study of the crossover from fractal viscous fingering to compact /linear flow at a characteristic crossover time, tau , in three dimensions to systems with as many as a 10(6) pore bodies. These larger systems enable us to investigate the flows in the fully compact/well-past-crossover regime. The center of mass of the injected fluid exhibits basically the same behavior as found earlier but with an improved characteristic time. However, our earlier study of much smaller systems was unable to study the interfacial width in the important well-past-crossover regime, ttau. Now, we can study both the time evolution and roughness of the interfacial width. The interfacial width exhibits the same fractal-to-compact crossover as the center of mass, with the same characteristic time. In the fully compact regime, ttau, the interfacial width grows approximately linearly with time so that the standard growth exponent is approximately unity, beta=1.0+/-0.1. We find that neither is the interface self-affine nor is the roughness of the interface in the compact regime consistent with an effective long-range surface tension as assumed by various theories. In fact, similar to Lévy flights, the height variations across the interface appear to be random with occasional large height variations.

Crack surface roughness in three-dimensional random fuse networks

Using large system sizes with extensive statistical sampling, we analyze the scaling properties of crack roughness and damage profiles in the three-dimensional random fuse model. The analysis of damage profiles indicates that damage accumulates in a diffusive manner up to the peak load, and localization sets in abruptly at the peak load, starting from a uniform damage landscape. The global crack width scales as W approximately L(0.5) and is consistent with the scaling of localization length xi approximately L(0.5) used in the data collapse of damage profiles in the postpeak regime. This consistency between the global crack roughness exponent and the postpeak damage profile localization length supports the idea that the postpeak damage profile is predominantly due to the localization produced by the catastrophic failure, which at the same time results in the formation of the final crack. Finally, the crack width distributions can be collapsed for different system sizes and follow a log-normal distribution.

Mean-field theory of localization in a fuse model

We propose a mean-field theory for the localization of damage in a quasistatic fuse model on a cylinder. Depending on the quenched disorder distribution of the fuse thresholds, we show analytically that the system can either stay in a percolation regime up to breakdown, or start at some imposed current, to localize starting from the smallest scale (lattice spacing), or instead go to a diffuse localization regime where damage starts to concentrate in bands of width scaling as the width of the system, but remains diffuse at smaller scales. Depending on the nature of the quenched disorder on the fuse thresholds, we derive analytically the phase diagram of the system separating these regimes and the current levels for the onset of these possible localizations. We compare these predictions to numerical results.