Abstract
It has long been stated that there are profound analogies between fracture experiments and earthquakes; however, few works attempt a complete characterization of the parallels between these so separate phenomena. We study the acoustic emission events produced during the compression of Vycor (). The Gutenberg-Richter law, the modified Omori’s law, and the law of aftershock productivity hold for a minimum of 5 decades, are independent of the compression rate, and keep stationary for all the duration of the experiments. The waiting-time distribution fulfills a unified scaling law with a power-law exponent close to 2.45 for long times, which is explained in terms of the temporal variations of the activity rate.
- Received 31 October 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.088702
© 2013 American Physical Society
Viewpoint
ViewpointLittle Earthquakes in the Lab
Published 19 February 2013
Laboratory-scale experiments reveal a profound statistical similarity between the fracture of heterogeneous materials and earthquakes.
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