Compressive Failure as a Critical Transition: Experimental Evidence and Mapping onto the Universality Class of Depinning

Chi-Cong Vu, David Amitrano, Olivier Plé, and Jérôme Weiss
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 015502 – Published 10 January 2019
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Abstract

Acoustic emission (AE) measurements performed during the compressive loading of concrete samples with three different microstructures (aggregate sizes and porosity) and four sample sizes revealed that failure is preceded by an acceleration of the rate of fracturing events, power law distributions of AE energies and durations near failure, and a divergence of the fracturing correlation length and time towards failure. This argues for an interpretation of compressive failure of disordered materials as a critical transition between an intact and a failed state. The associated critical exponents were found to be independent of sample size and microstructural disorder and close to mean-field depinning values. Although compressive failure differs from classical depinning in several respects, including the nature of the elastic redistribution kernel, an analogy between the two processes allows deriving (finite-) sizing effects on strength that match our extensive data set. This critical interpretation of failure may have also important consequences in terms of natural hazards forecasting, such as volcanic eruptions, landslides, or cliff collapses.

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  • Received 17 July 2018
  • Revised 13 September 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.015502

© 2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Chi-Cong Vu1, David Amitrano1, Olivier Plé2, and Jérôme Weiss1,*

  • 1University of Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, ISTerre, 38000 Grenoble, France
  • 2University of Savoie Mont-Blanc, CNRS, LOCIE, 73736 Le Bourget du Lac Cedex, France

  • *jerome.weiss@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

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Issue

Vol. 122, Iss. 1 — 11 January 2019

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