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Fracture strength of disordered media: Universality, interactions, and tail asymptotics

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

C. Manzato
A. Shekhawat
P.K.V.V. Nukala
M.J. Alava
J.P. Sethna
S. Zapperi

Abstract

We study the asymptotic properties of fracture strength distributions of disordered elastic media by a combination of renormalization group, extreme value theory, and numerical simulation. We investigate the validity of the "weakest-link hypothesis" in the presence of realistic long-ranged interactions in the random fuse model. Numerical simulations indicate that the fracture strength is well-described by the Duxbury-Leath-Beale (DLB) distribution which is shown to flow asymptotically to the Gumbel distribution. We explore the relation between the extreme value distributions and the DLB-type asymptotic distributions and show that the universal extreme value forms may not be appropriate to describe the nonuniversal low-strength tail. © 2012 American Physical Society.

Date Published

Journal

Physical Review Letters

Volume

108

Issue

6

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84856932927&doi=10.1103%2fPhysRevLett.108.065504&partnerID=40&md5=89eb47e50042be099d82fe68d2cfc4db

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.065504

Research Area

Group (Lab)

James Sethna Group

Funding Source

222919
228398

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