We investigate the size scaling of the macroscopic fracture strength of heterogeneous materials when microscopic disorder is controlled by fat-tailed distributions. We consider a fiber bundle model where the strength of single fibers is described by a power law distribution over a finite range. Tuning the amount of disorder by varying the power law exponent and the upper cutoff of fibers strength, in the limit of equal load sharing an astonishing size effect is revealed: For small system sizes the bundle strength increases with the number of fibers and the usual decreasing size effect of heterogeneous materials is only restored beyond a characteristic size. We show analytically that the extreme order statistics of fibers strength is responsible for this peculiar behavior. Analyzing the results of computer simulations we deduce a scaling form which describes the dependence of the macroscopic strength of fiber bundles on the parameters of microscopic disorder over the entire range of system sizes.
The present work deals with the behavior of fiber bundle model under heterogeneous loading condition. The model is explored both in the mean-field limit as well as with local stress concentration. In the mean field limit, the failure abruptness decreases with increasing order k of heterogeneous loading. In this limit, a brittle to quasi-brittle transition is observed at a particular strength of disorder which changes with k. On the other hand, the model is hardly affected by such heterogeneity in the limit where local stress concentration plays a crucial role. The continuous limit of the heterogeneous loading is also studied and discussed in this paper. Some of the important results related to fiber bundle model are reviewed and their responses to our new scheme of heterogeneous loading are studied in details. Our findings are universal with respect to the nature of the threshold distribution adopted to assign strength to an individual fiber.
We present a study of the fiber bundle model using equal load sharing dynamics where the breaking thresholds of the fibers are drawn randomly from a power law distribution of the form $p(b)sim b^{-1}$ in the range $10^{-beta}$ to $10^{beta}$. Tuning the value of $beta$ continuously over a wide range, the critical behavior of the fiber bundle has been studied both analytically as well as numerically. Our results are: (i) The critical load $sigma_c(beta,N)$ for the bundle of size $N$ approaches its asymptotic value $sigma_c(beta)$ as $sigma_c(beta,N) = sigma_c(beta)+AN^{-1/ u(beta)}$ where $sigma_c(beta)$ has been obtained analytically as $sigma_c(beta) = 10^beta/(2beta eln10)$ for $beta geq beta_u = 1/(2ln10)$, and for $beta<beta_u$ the weakest fiber failure leads to the catastrophic breakdown of the entire fiber bundle, similar to brittle materials, leading to $sigma_c(beta) = 10^{-beta}$; (ii) the fraction of broken fibers right before the complete breakdown of the bundle has the form $1-1/(2beta ln10)$; (iii) the distribution $D(Delta)$ of the avalanches of size $Delta$ follows a power law $D(Delta)sim Delta^{-xi}$ with $xi = 5/2$ for $Delta gg Delta_c(beta)$ and $xi = 3/2$ for $Delta ll Delta_c(beta)$, where the crossover avalanche size $Delta_c(beta) = 2/(1-e10^{-2beta})^2$.
We investigate the fracture of heterogeneous materials occurring under unloading from an initial load. Based on a fiber bundle model of time dependent fracture, we show that depending on the unloading rate the system has two phases: for rapid unloading the system suffers only partial failure and it has an infinite lifetime, while at slow unloading macroscopic failure occurs in a finite time. The transition between the two phases proved to be analogous to continuous phase transitions. Computer simulations revealed that during unloading the fracture proceeds in bursts of local breakings triggered by slowly accumulating damage. In both phases the time evolution starts with a relaxation of the bursting activity characterized by a universal power law decay of the burst rate. In the phase of finite lifetime the initial slowdown is followed by an acceleration towards macroscopic failure where the increasing rate of bursts obeys the (inverse) Omori law of earthquakes. We pointed out a strong correlation between the time where the event rate reaches a minimum value and of the lifetime of the system which allows for forecasting of the imminent catastrophic failure.
A classic problem in physics is the origin of fat tailed distributions generated by complex systems. We study the distributions of stock returns measured over different time lags $tau.$ We find that destroying all correlations without changing the $tau = 1$ d distribution, by shuffling the order of the daily returns, causes the fat tails almost to vanish for $tau>1$ d. We argue that the fat tails are caused by known long-range volatility correlations. Indeed, destroying only sign correlations, by shuffling the order of only the signs (but not the absolute values) of the daily returns, allows the fat tails to persist for $tau >1$ d.
We investigate the effect of the amount of disorder on the statistics of breaking bursts during the quasi-static fracture of heterogeneous materials. We consider a fiber bundle model where the strength of single fibers is sampled from a power law distribution over a finite range, so that the amount of materials disorder can be controlled by varying the power law exponent and the upper cutoff of fibers strength. Analytical calculations and computer simulations, performed in the limit of equal load sharing, revealed that depending on the disorder parameters the mechanical response of the bundle is either perfectly brittle where the first fiber breaking triggers a catastrophic avalanche, or it is quasi-brittle where macroscopic failure is preceded by a sequence of bursts. In the quasi-brittle phase, the statistics of avalanche sizes is found to show a high degree of complexity. In particular, we demonstrate that the functional form of the size distribution of bursts depends on the system size: for large upper cutoffs of fibers strength, in small systems the sequence of bursts has a high degree of stationarity characterized by a power law size distribution with a universal exponent. However, for sufficiently large bundles the breaking process accelerates towards the critical point of failure which gives rise to a crossover between two power laws. The transition between the two regimes occurs at a characteristic system size which depends on the disorder parameters.