Abstract
Recent numerical results for a model describing dispersive transport in ricepiles are explained by mapping the model to the depinning transition of an elastic interface that is dragged at one end through a random medium. The average velocity of transport vanishes with system size as , and the avalanche size distribution exponent , where from interface depinning. We conjecture that the purely deterministic Burridge-Knopoff “train” model for earthquakes is in the same universality class.
- Received 15 March 1996
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.111
©1996 American Physical Society