Eur. Phys. J. B 6, 13-24 (1998)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050521

An experimental test of the critical behaviour of fracture precursors

Laboratoire de Physique, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 allée d'Italie, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France

Corresponding author: ^a cilibe@physique.ens-lyon.fr

Received: 23 January 1998
Revised: 20 April 1998
Accepted: 17 June 1998
Published online: 15 November 1998

Abstract

The statistical properties and the localization of fracture precursors on heteregeneous materials is studied by recording their acoustic emission as a function of the applied load. It's found that the microcrack cluster together as the load increases and the instantaneous acoustic energy has an invariant power law distribution. The integrated acoustic energy presents a critical divergency close to the failure load for the sample. These result support the idea that fracture can be viewed as a critical phenomenon. Finally a measure of the concentration of microcraks, which allows us to predict the failure load, is introduced. These properties are studied also when a periodic load is applied to the sample. It's found that the Kaiser effect is not strictly satisfied in heteregeneous materials.