No Arabic abstract
We observe the failure process of a fiber bundle model with a variable stress release range, $gamma$, higher the value of $gamma$ lower the stress release range. By tuning $gamma$ from low to high, it is possible to go from the mean-field (MF) limit of the model to local load sharing (LLS) where local stress concentration plays a crucial role. In the MF limit, the avalanche size $s$ and energy $E$ emitted during the avalanche are highly correlated producing the same distribution for both $P(s)$ and $Q(E)$: a scale-free distribution with a universal exponent -5/2. With increasing $gamma$, the model enters the LLS limit. In this limit, due to the presence of local stress concentration such correlation $C(gamma)$ between $s$ and $E$ decreases where the nature of the decreases depends highly on the dimension of the bundle. In 1d, the $C(gamma)$ stars from a high value for low $gamma$ and decreases towards zero when $gamma$ is increased. As a result, $Q(E)$ and $P(s)$ are similar at low $gamma$, an exponential one, and then $Q(E)$ becomes power-law for high-stress release range though $P(s)$ remains exponential. On the other hand, in 2d, the $C(gamma)$ decreases slightly with $gamma$ but remains at a high value. Due to such a high correlation, the distribution of both $s$ and $E$ is exponential in the LLS limit independent of how large $gamma$ is.
The statistical properties of avalanches in a dissipative particulate system under slow shear are investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. It is found that the magnitude-frequency distribution obeys the Gutenberg-Richter law only in the proximity of a critical density and that the exponent is sensitive to the minute changes in density. It is also found that aftershocks occur in this system with a decay rate that follows the Modified Omori law. We show that the exponent of the magnitude-frequency distribution and the time constant of the Modified Omori law are decreasing functions of the shear stress. The dependences of these two parameters on shear stress coincide with recent seismological observations [D. Schorlemmer et al. Nature 437, 539 (2005); C. Narteau et al. Nature 462, 642 (2009)].
We determine the nonlocal stress autocorrelation tensor in an homogeneous and isotropic system of interacting Brownian particles starting from the Smoluchowski equation of the configurational probability density. In order to relate stresses to particle displacements as appropriate in viscoelastic states, we go beyond the usual hydrodynamic description obtained in the Zwanzig-Mori projection operator formalism by introducing the proper irreducible dynamics following Cichocki and Hess, and Kawasaki. Differently from these authors, we include transverse contributions as well. This recovers the expression for the stress autocorrelation including the elastic terms in solid states as found for Newtonian and Langevin systems, in case that those are evaluated in the overdamped limit. Finally, we argue that the found memory function reduces to the shear and bulk viscosity in the hydrodynamic limit of smooth and slow fluctuations and derive the corresponding hydrodynamic equations.
The shear stress relaxation modulus $G(t)$ may be determined from the shear stress $tau(t)$ after switching on a tiny step strain $gamma$ or by inverse Fourier transformation of the storage modulus $G^{prime}(omega)$ or the loss modulus $G^{primeprime}(omega)$ obtained in a standard oscillatory shear experiment at angular frequency $omega$. It is widely assumed that $G(t)$ is equivalent in general to the equilibrium stress autocorrelation function $C(t) = beta V langle delta tau(t) delta tau(0)rangle$ which may be readily computed in computer simulations ($beta$ being the inverse temperature and $V$ the volume). Focusing on isotropic solids formed by permanent spring networks we show theoretically by means of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and computationally by molecular dynamics simulation that in general $G(t) = G_{eq} + C(t)$ for $t > 0$ with $G_{eq}$ being the static equilibrium shear modulus. A similar relation holds for $G^{prime}(omega)$. $G(t)$ and $C(t)$ must thus become different for a solid body and it is impossible to obtain $G_{eq}$ directly from $C(t)$.
Bernoulli random walks, a simple avalanche model, and a special branching process are essesntially identical. The identity gives alternative insights into the properties of these basic model sytems.
We propose a new test of the critical earthquake model based on the hypothesis that precursory earthquakes are ``actors that create fluctuations in the stress field which exhibit an increasing correlation length as the critical large event becomes imminent. Our approach constitutes an attempt to build a more physically-based cumulative function in the spirit of but improving on the cumulative Benioff strain used in previous works documenting the phenomenon of accelerated seismicity. Using a space and time dependent visco-elastic Green function in a two-layer model of the Earth lithosphere, we compute the spatio-temporal stress fluctuations induced by every earthquake precursor and estimate, through an appropriate wavelet transform, the contribution of each event to the correlation properties of the stress field around the location of the main shock at different scales. Our physically-based definition of the cumulative stress function adding up the contribution of stress loads by all earthquakes preceding a main shock seems to be unable to reproduce an acceleration of the cumulative stress nor an increase of the stress correlation length similar to those observed previously for the cumulative Benioff strain. Either earthquakes are ``witnesses of large scale tectonic organization and/or the triggering Green function requires much more than just visco-elastic stress transfers.