Rupture cascades in a discrete element model of a porous sedimentary rock

We investigate the scaling properties of the sources of crackling noise in a fully-dynamic numerical model of sedimentary rocks subject to uniaxial compression. The model is initiated by filling a cylindrical container with randomly-sized spherical particles which are then connected by breakable beams. Loading at a constant strain rate the cohesive elements fail and the resulting stress transfer produces sudden bursts of correlated failures, directly analogous to the sources of acoustic emissions in real experiments. The source size, energy, and duration can all be quantified for an individual event, and the population analyzed for their scaling properties, including the distribution of waiting times between consecutive events. Despite the non-stationary loading, the results are all characterized by power law distributions over a broad range of scales in agreement with experiments. As failure is approached temporal correlation of events emerge accompanied by spatial clustering.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Acceleration and localization of subcritical crack growth in a natural composite material

Catastrophic failure of natural and engineered materials is often preceded by an acceleration and localization of damage that can be observed indirectly from acoustic emissions (AE) generated by the nucleation and growth of microcracks. In this paper we present a detailed investigation of the statistical properties and spatiotemporal characteristics of AE signals generated during triaxial compression of a sandstone sample. We demonstrate that the AE event amplitudes and interevent times are characterized by scaling distributions with shapes that remain invariant during most of the loading sequence. Localization of the AE activity on an incipient fault plane is associated with growth in AE rate in the form of a time-reversed Omori law with an exponent near 1. The experimental findings are interpreted using a model that assumes scale-invariant growth of the dominating crack or fault zone, consistent with the Dugdale-Barenblatt “process zone” model. We determine formal relationships between fault size, fault growth rate, and AE event rate, which are found to be consistent with the experimental observations. From these relations, we conclude that relatively slow growth of a subcritical fault may be associated with a significantly more rapid increase of the AE rate and that monitoring AE rate may therefore provide more reliable predictors of incipient failure than direct monitoring of the growing fault

Third order nonlinear susceptibility of InN at near band-gap wavelengths

The authors report room-temperature measurements of the third order nonlinear susceptibility modulus ∫ (3) ∫ of thick (∼600 nm) InN layers. Transmission measurements provide a room-temperature value for the optical band gap of the samples slightly above 1500 nm. Third order nonlinear optical susceptibility has been measured using degenerate four wave mixing experiments at wavelengths near and above band gap. ∫ (3) ∫ values of (4.2-10) × 10-10 esu were measured at this wavelength range. The associated relaxation time of the generated population grating at 1500 nm was measured. The obtained value of 4.8 ps is consistent with a nonradiative recombination mechanism. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewe

Modelling marine emissions and atmospheric distributions of halocarbons and dimethyl sulfide: the influence of prescribed water concentration vs. prescribed emissions

Marine-produced short-lived trace gases such as dibromomethane (CH2Br2), bromoform (CHBr3), methyliodide (CH3I) and dimethyl sulfide (DMS) significantly impact tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry. Describing their marine emissions in atmospheric chemistry models as accurately as possible is necessary to quantify their impact on ozone depletion and Earth's radiative budget. So far, marine emissions of trace gases have mainly been prescribed from emission climatologies, thus lacking the interaction between the actual state of the atmosphere and the ocean. Here we present simulations with the chemistry climate model EMAC (ECHAM5/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry) with online calculation of emissions based on surface water concentrations, in contrast to directly prescribed emissions. Considering the actual state of the model atmosphere results in a concentration gradient consistent with model real-time conditions at the ocean surface and in the atmosphere, which determine the direction and magnitude of the computed flux. This method has a number of conceptual and practical benefits, as the modelled emission can respond consistently to changes in sea surface temperature, surface wind speed, sea ice cover and especially atmospheric mixing ratio. This online calculation could enhance, dampen or even invert the fluxes (i.e. deposition instead of emissions) of very short-lived substances (VSLS). We show that differences between prescribing emissions and prescribing concentrations (−28 % for CH2Br2 to +11 % for CHBr3) result mainly from consideration of the actual, time-varying state of the atmosphere. The absolute magnitude of the differences depends mainly on the surface ocean saturation of each particular gas. Comparison to observations from aircraft, ships and ground stations reveals that computing the air–sea flux interactively leads in most of the cases to more accurate atmospheric mixing ratios in the model compared to the computation from prescribed emissions. Calculating emissions online also enables effective testing of different air–sea transfer velocity (k) parameterizations, which was performed here for eight different parameterizations. The testing of these different k values is of special interest for DMS, as recently published parameterizations derived by direct flux measurements using eddy covariance measurements suggest decreasing k values at high wind speeds or a linear relationship with wind speed. Implementing these parameterizations reduces discrepancies in modelled DMS atmospheric mixing ratios and observations by a factor of 1.5 compared to parameterizations with a quadratic or cubic relationship to wind spee

Avalanche precursors of failure in hierarchical fuse networks

We study precursors of failure in hierarchical random fuse network models which can be considered as idealizations of hierarchical (bio)materials where fibrous assemblies are held together by multi-level (hierarchical) cross-links. When such structures are loaded towards failure, the patterns of precursory avalanche activity exhibit generic scale invariance: Irrespective of load, precursor activity is characterized by power-law avalanche size distributions without apparent cut-off, with power-law exponents that decrease continuously with increasing load. This failure behavior and the ensuing super-rough crack morphology differ significantly from the findings in non-hierarchical structures

Point-occurrence self-similarity in crackling-noise systems and in other complex systems

It has been recently found that a number of systems displaying crackling noise also show a remarkable behavior regarding the temporal occurrence of successive events versus their size: a scaling law for the probability distributions of waiting times as a function of a minimum size is fulfilled, signaling the existence on those systems of self-similarity in time-size. This property is also present in some non-crackling systems. Here, the uncommon character of the scaling law is illustrated with simple marked renewal processes, built by definition with no correlations. Whereas processes with a finite mean waiting time do not fulfill a scaling law in general and tend towards a Poisson process in the limit of very high sizes, processes without a finite mean tend to another class of distributions, characterized by double power-law waiting-time densities. This is somehow reminiscent of the generalized central limit theorem. A model with short-range correlations is not able to escape from the attraction of those limit distributions. A discussion on open problems in the modeling of these properties is provided.Comment: Submitted to J. Stat. Mech. for the proceedings of UPON 2008 (Lyon), topic: crackling nois