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# Critical Ruptures

## 1 Plan of the study

In this paper, we first present in section 2 a brief review of the “critical rupture” concept with an emphasis on the role of heterogeneity. Section 3 describes the experimental systems and the properties of the acoustic emission time series that we analyse with three theoretical formulas derived from the critical rupture concept. We present a brief justification for these three power laws. Section 4 gives the results obtained on the acoustic emission energy release rate on seven systems. Section 5 analyses the cumulative energy releases of these seven systems. Section 6 describes the relative merits of the three power law formulas for the prediction of the critical pressure of rupture and section 7 concludes.

## 2 Review of the “critical rupture” concept

### 2.1 Background

The damage and fracture of materials is of enormous technological interest due to their economic and human cost. They cover a wide range of phenomena like, e.g., cracking of glass, aging of concrete, the failure of fiber networks in the formation of paper and the breaking of a metal bar subject to an external load. Failure of composite systems are of utmost importance in naval, aeronautics and space industry . By the term composite, we refer to materials with heterogeneous microscopic structures and also to assemblages of macroscopic elements forming a super-structure. Chemical and nuclear plants suffer from cracking due to corrosion either of chemical or radioactive origin, aided by thermal and/or mechanical stress.

Despite the large amount of experimental data and the considerable effort that has been undertaken by material scientists , many questions about fracture have not been answered yet. There is no comprehensive understanding of rupture phenomena but only a partial classification in restricted and relatively simple situations. This lack of fundamental understanding is indeed reflected in the absence of reliable prediction methods for rupture based on a suitable monitoring of the stressed system. Not only is there a lack of theoretical understanding of the reliability of a system, but the empirical laws themselves have often limited value. What we need are models that incorporate the underlying physics to identify and use relevant precursory patterns. Here, we propose innovative steps in this direction that are based on two key concepts : the role of heterogeneity and the possible existence of a hierarchy of characteristic scales.

Many material ruptures occur by a “one crack” mechanism and a lot of effort is being devoted to the understanding, detection and prevention of the nucleation of cracks . Exceptions to the “one crack” rupture mechanism are heterogeneous materials such as fiber composites, rocks, concrete under compression and materials with large distributed residual stresses. The common property shared by these systems is the existence of large inhomogeneities, that often limit the use of effective medium theories for the elastic and more generally the mechanical properties. In these systems, failure may occur as the culmination of a progressive damage involving complex interactions between multiple defects and the growing of micro-cracks. In addition, other relaxation, creep, ductile, or plastic behaviors, possibly coupled with corrosion effects, may come into play. Many important practical applications involve the coupling between mechanic and chemical effects with the competition between several characteristic time scales. Application of stress may act as a catalyst of chemical reactions  or, reciprocally, chemical reactions may lead to bond weakening  and thus promote failure. A dramatic example is the aging of present aircrafts due to repeating loading in a corrosive environment . The interaction between multiple defects and the existence of several characteristic scales present a considerable challenge to the modeling and prediction of rupture. Those are the systems and problems that will guide our modeling efforts.

### 2.2 Previous Statistical Physics models

#### 2.2.1 Scaling and critical point

Motivated by the multi-scale nature of ruptures in heterogeneous systems and by analogies with the percolation model , de Arcangelis et al. first suggested  in the mid-eighties that rupture of sufficiently heterogeneous media would exhibit some universal properties similar to critical phase transitions. The idea was to build on the knowledge accumulated in statistical physics on the so-called $`N`$body problem and cooperative effects in order to describe multiple interactions between defects. Applying these concepts, scaling laws were found to describe size effects and damage properties \[10-14\]. However, being essentially quasi-static in nature they neglected important aspects of the rupture process and had very limited potential in terms of time-to-failure analysis. In 1992 a dynamical model of rupture introduced in 1992 was introduced which achieved a higher degree of realism. It was initially formulated in the framework of electric breakdown under the name of the “thermal fuse model”  : when subjected to a given current, a fuse heats up due to a generalized Joule effect and eventually breaks down when its temperature reaches the melting threshold. Later, it was reformulated in  by showing that it is exactly equivalent to a (scalar) anti-plane mechanical model of rupture with elastic interaction in which the temperature becomes a local damage variable. This model accounts for space-dependent elastic and rupture properties, has a realistic loading and produces many growing interacting micro-cracks with an organization which is a function of the damage-stress law. It was found that, under a step-function stress loading, the total rate of damage, as measured for instance by the elastic energy released per unit time, on average increases as a power law of the time-to-failure. In this model, rupture was indeed found to occur as the culmination of the progressive nucleation, growth and fusion between micro-cracks, leading to a fractal network, but the exponents were found to be non-universal and a function of the damage law. This model has since then been found to describe correctly the experiments on the electric breakdown of insulator-conducting composites . Another application of the thermal fuse model is damage by electro-migration of polycrystalline metal films . See also  for relations with dendrites and fronts propagation.

In 1991-1995, it was proposed and tested on a real engineering composite structure the concept that failure in fiber composites may be described similarly, namely that the rate of damage would exhibit a “critical” behavior . This critical behavior corresponds to an acceleration of the rate of energy release or to a deceleration, depending on the nature and range of the stress transfer mechanism and on the loading procedure. Based on general consideration on the nature of the experimental signatures of critical rupture, it was proposed that the power law behavior of the time-to-failure analysis should be corrected for the presence of log-periodic modulations  as signatures of a hierarchy of characteristic scales in the rupture process. This method is now been used by the French Aerospace company Aérospatiale-Matra on pressure tanks made of kevlar-matrix and carbon-matrix composites embarked on the European Ariane 4 and 5 rockets. In a nutshell, the method consists in this application in recording acoustic emissions under constant stress rate and the acoustic emission energy as a function of stress is fitted by the above log-periodic critical theory . One of the parameter is the time of failure and the fit thus provides a “prediction” when the sample is not brought to failure in the first test . Good predictive performances have been reported (Anifrani, private communication). Since we now have a better understanding of the mechanisms at the origin hierarchical self-organization in rupture  which seems to apply to some other systems as well , here we re-examine the critical rupture concept and the evidence for the existence of log-periodic corrections to scaling . This study is based on the analysis of 7 acoustic emission recordings of 7 pressure tank structures brought to rupture made available to us. We also present preliminary tests of the predictive skills, in particular using an extension of the theory which allows us to incorporate the cross-over regime from the non-critical to the critical regime .

#### 2.2.2 The role of heterogeneities

A key parameter is the degree and nature of disorder. This was considered early by Mogi , who showed experimentally on a variety of materials that, the larger the disorder, the stronger and more useful are the precursors to rupture. For a long time, the Japanese research effort for earthquake prediction and risk assessment was based on this very idea .

The role of heterogeneities on the nature of rupture has been quantified using a spring-block model with stress transfer over limited range . This model does not claim realism but attempts rather to capture the role of limited stress transfer and heterogeneity. The heterogeneity was found to play the role of a relevant field : systems with limited stress amplification exhibit a tri-critical transition , from a Griffith-type abrupt rupture (first-order) regime to a progressive damage (critical) regime as the disorder increases. This effect has also been demonstrated on a simple mean-field model of rupture, known as the democratic fiber bundle model . In a two-dimensional spring-block model of surface fracture, the stress can be released by breaking of springs and block slips . This spring-block model may represent schematically the experimental situation where a balloon covered with paint or dry resin is progressively inflated. An industrial application may be for instance a metallic tank with carbon or kevlar fibers impregnated in a resin matrix wrapped up around it which is slowly pressurized , as we report in this paper. As a consequence, it elastically deforms, transferring tensile stress to the overlayer. Slipping (called fiber-matrix delamination) and cracking can thus occur in the overlayer. In , this process is modeled by an array of blocks which represents the overlayer on a coarse grained scale in contact with a surface with solid friction contact. The solid friction will limit stress amplification. The stress-strain curves for different values of the disorder $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, here quantified by the width of the distribution of initial positions of the blocks which captures the effect of residual stresses in the material (but does not explore the other dimensions of disorder), show a larger softening and rounding as disorder increases. The phase diagram of the fracturing in the $`(\mathrm{\Delta };F_c/F_s)`$ plane, where $`F_c`$ (resp. $`F_s`$) is the rupture (resp. sliding) threshold shows that, for fixed $`F_c/F_s<2.9`$, increasing the disorder $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ allows the system to go from a first-order behaviour to a critical regime. The fact that the disorder is so relevant as to create the analog of a tri-critical behavior can be traced back to the existence of solid friction on the blocks which ensures that the elastic forces in the springs are carried over a bounded distance (equal to the size of a slipping “avalanche”) during the stress transfer induced by block motions. In this context, we note that the importance of heterogeneity in the context of fiber composites has also been stressed in .

In the presence of long-range elasticity, disorder is found to be always relevant leading to a critical rupture. However, the disorder controls the width of the critical region . The smaller it is, the smaller will be the critical region, which may become too small to play any role in practice. This has been confirmed by simulations of the thermal fuse model mentioned above . The damage rate on approach to failure for different disorder can be rescaled onto a universal master curve .

Numerical simulations of Sahimi and Arbati  have recently confirmed that, near the global failure point, the cumulative elastic energy released during fracturing of heterogeneous solids with long-range elastic interactions follows a power law with log-periodic corrections to the leading term consistent with previous results \[22-30\]. The presence of log-periodic correction to scaling in the elastic energy released has also been demonstrated numerically for the thermal fuse model  using a novel averaging procedure, called the “canonical ensemble averaging”. A recent experimental study of rupture of fiber-glass composites has also confirmed the critical scenario .

These results indicate that the “critical” behavior is not restricted to limited stress amplification but may well pertain to a much broader class of systems. This needs to be investigated more. In quasi-static models of rupture , numerical simulations and perturbation expansions have shown the existence of three main regimes, depending on the distribution $`p(x)`$ of rupture thresholds $`x`$. If $`p(x)x^{\varphi _01}`$ for $`x0`$ and $`p(x)x^{(1+\varphi _{\mathrm{}})}`$ for $`x+\mathrm{}`$, then the three regimes depend on the relative value of $`\varphi _0`$ and $`\varphi _{\mathrm{}}`$ compared to two critical values $`\varphi _0^c`$ and $`\varphi _{\mathrm{}}^c`$. The “weak disorder” regime occurs for $`\varphi _0>\varphi _0^c`$ (few weak elements) and $`\varphi _{\mathrm{}}>\varphi _{\mathrm{}}^c`$ (few strong elements) and boils down essentially to the nucleation of a “one-crack” run-away. For $`\varphi _0\varphi _0^c`$ (many weak elements) and $`\varphi _{\mathrm{}}>\varphi _{\mathrm{}}^c`$ (few strong elements), the rupture is controlled by the weak elements, with important size effects. The damage is diffuse but presents a structuration at large scales. For $`\varphi _0>\varphi _0^c`$ (few weak elements) and $`\varphi _{\mathrm{}}\varphi _{\mathrm{}}^c`$ (many strong elements), the rupture is controlled by the strong elements : the final damage is diffuse and the density of broken elements goes to a non-vanishing constant. This third case is very similar to the percolation models of rupture and it has been shown that percolation is retrieved in the limit of very large disorder .

#### 2.2.3 Qualitative physical scenario

A qualitative physical picture for the progressive damage of an heterogeneous system leading to global failure emerges from all these results. First, single isolated defects and micro-cracks nucleate which then, with the increase of load or time of loading, both grow and multiply leading to an increase of the density of defects per unit volume. As a consequence, defects begin to merge until a “critical density” is reached. Uncorrelated percolation  provides a starting modeling point valid in the limit of very large disorder . For realistic systems, long-range correlations transported by the stress field around defects and cracks make the problem much more subtle. Time dependence is expected to be a crucial aspect in the process of correlation building in these processes. As the damage increases, a new “phase” appears, where micro-cracks begin to merge leading to screening and other cooperative effects. Finally, the main fracture is formed causing global failure. The nature of this global failure may be abrupt (“first-order”) or “critical” depending of the type of heterogeneities influencing load transfer and stress relaxation mechanisms. In the “critical” case, the failure of composite systems may often be viewed, in simple intuitive terms, as the result of a correlated percolation process. However, the challenge is to describe the transition from damage and corrosion processes at a microscopic level to macroscopic failure.

## 3 Data and methodology

### 3.1 The experimental systems

The systems used in our study are spherical tanks of radius or 0.2 to 0.42 m, made of kevlar or carbon fibers pre-impregnated in a resin matrix wrapped up around a thin metallic liner (steel or titanium). They are fabricated and instrumented by Aérospatiale-Matra Inc. In a typical experiment, each tank is pressurized by increasing the internal water content at a constant pressure rate of 3 to 6 bars per second. Acoustic emission signals are recorded from three to six acoustic transducers with resonant frequency of 150 KHz, placed at equal distances on the equator. Acoustic emissions characterize rather faithfully the irreversible motions and damages occuring within the composites under increasing load. The recording of acoustic emissions is performed by a Locan-At from Euro Physical Acoustics Inc, with tunings (thresholds, gains, Peak Definition Time, Hit Definition Time, Hit Lock-out Time) adjusted for each experiment. The output of the Locan-At is a list of acoustic events with their time, the pressure at which they occured, their duration, their amplitude and a measure of their energy. In the sequel, we analyse the files giving the energy of all recorded acoustic emission events as a function of pressure.

Acoustic emissions are mechanical waves produced by sudden movements in stressed materials. They occur in a wide range of materials, structures and processes, from the largest scale (earthquakes) to the smallest on (dislocation motions). Acoustic emission has been found to be a delicate technique to use since each loading is unique and tests the whole structure. Contamination by noise is a real problem. Notwithstanding the development of numerous acoustic emission structural testing procedures , their practical implementations for prediction purpose have not been found reliable. The acoustic emission technique differs from most other non-destructive methods in that acoustic emissions originate from within the material and results from high-frequency motions, while most methods detect existing geometrical heterogeneities. A large body of research in the mechanical literature has thus focused on the identification of the types of motions that generate acoustic emissions and how their signatures can be associated with their sources. Such sudden material motions can be due to crack nucleation and growth, fiber-matrix delamination, fiber rupture, etc. In the present work, we focus rather on the global view that emerges by analyzing the acoustic emission times series over the whole lifetime of the pressure ramp up to rupture.

We analyse 7 acoustic emission data sets recorded during the pressure ramp up to rupture of 7 distinct composite pressure tanks listed below in table 1 with some of the characteristics of the experiments. The analysis was not performed on the raw data sets due to a number of experimental factors such as unreliable measurements, limited resolution as well as physical considerations. First, the data was truncated in the upper and lower ends. The reason for the latter is that the recordings made for very low pressures are irrelevant to the rupture process and are unreliable since the low level of acoustic emissions can easily be confused with exterior noise. This truncation was made at $`100`$ bars so that all recordings start at pressure larger or equal to this value. Some data sets did not have recordings for such low pressures and was hence not truncated. The upper endpoint was identified as the first point where the maximum pressure was recorded. The data files were changed into files of binned data using a binning equal to the resolution of the pressure measurement, specifically $`1`$ bar. The maximum value of the acoustic emission for each data set has been normalized to $`1000`$ in order to make the numerical treatment similar for all 7 experiments.

### 3.2 Theory

We have used three increasingly sophisticated mathematical formulas to model the acoustic emission time series. The first one reads

$$f(p)=A+B(p_cp)^z$$
(1)
and has a priori 3 adjustable parameters. The important parameters are the critical value $`p_c`$ of the pressure at rupture and the exponent $`z`$ (in general negative), which quantifies the acceleration of the acoustic emission rate. This is the fundamental representation of rupture seen as a critical point in the time-to-failure analysis.

The second formula

$$f(p)=A+B(p_cp)^z+C(p_cp)^z\mathrm{cos}(\omega \mathrm{ln}(p_cp)\varphi )$$
(2)
contains an additional term with relative weight $`C/B`$, describing a so-called log-periodic correction to scaling . Basically, this formula means that the power law acceleration is modulated by downs and ups organized as a geometrical series converging to $`p_c`$. In other words, the intermittent accelerations and quiescents of the acoustic emissions around the average power law acceleration are more and more closely spaced as rupture is approached. Mathematically, this log-periodic structures can be represented as the real part of a correction to scaling of the form $`C(p_cp)^{z+i\omega }`$, i.e., by a complex exponent. The imaginary part $`\omega `$ has the meaning of a logarithmic angular frequency and defines the scaling factor $`\lambda =\mathrm{exp}[\pi /\omega ]`$ of the geometrical series of alternating peaks and troughs. The phase $`\varphi `$ is of no consequence as it accommodates the specific choice of the pressure unit: $`\omega \mathrm{ln}(p_cp)\varphi =\omega \mathrm{ln}[(p_cp)/p_0]`$ by the definition $`\varphi =\omega \mathrm{ln}p_0`$. From a general view point, log-periodic oscillations are the hallmark of a discrete hierarchical structure obeying a discrete scale invariance symmetry . Expression (2) has been proposed previously on the basis of a discrete renormalization group approach to rupture . Detailed theoretical and numerical analysis of ensemble of interacting cracks have shown that such discrete hierarchy can self-organize from a cascade of Mullins-Sekerka instabilities .

The third formula

$`f(p)=A`$ $`+`$ $`B(\text{tanh}((p_cp)/\tau )))^z`$ (3)
$`+`$ $`C(\text{tanh}((p_cp)/\tau )))^z\mathrm{cos}(\omega \mathrm{ln}(\text{tanh}((p_cp)/\tau ))\varphi )`$
adds a new ingredient and is obtained from (2) by replacing $`p_cp`$ by $`\text{tanh}((p_cp)/\tau )`$. It is based on a parametric representation of the numerical study of Sornette and Andersen , who found clear evidence of scaling of the macroscopic elastic modulus and of the elastic energy release rate as a function of time-to-rupture in the thermal fuse model  beyond the pure critical power law regime: this allowed them to collapse neatly the numerical simulations over more than five decades in time and more than one decade in disorder amplitude onto a single master curve that has the following properties. It is a pure power law like (1) close to rupture (critical region); far from rupture where only few damage events occur (non-critical region), it relaxes exponentially to a constant value. The simplest functional form that captures these two regimes and interpolates smoothly between them is $`[\mathrm{tanh}((p_cp)/\tau ))]^z`$, which reduces to (1) for $`p_cp\tau `$ and goes exponentially to the constant $`1`$ for $`p_cp\tau `$. The characteristic pressure $`\tau `$ sets the cross-over scale between the critical and non-critical regime. The analysis  was based on averages of several tens of independent samples. As shown in , ensemble averaging destroy log-periodic oscillations due to the random phase $`\varphi `$ which can vary from sample to sample. When studying specific realisations as performed below, these log-periodic structures have to be considered as potentially important. This is why we enrich the hyperbolic tangent formula with the log-periodic corrections associated with equation (2), so that expression (3) reduces to (2) for $`p_cp\tau `$.

For each acoustic emission time series, we have analysed both the energy rate as well as its cumulative. The rational for studying the cumulative acoustic emission as a function of applied pressure is that taking the cumulative is a low-pass filter that smoothen very significantly the noise and usually provides better signals with higher signal-over-noise ratio. For our purpose however, it has been shown to reduce significantly genuine log-periodic oscillations present in the original data . We thus find useful to perform the analysis of both the binned (energy rate) and its cumulative, which present complementary values. Since the cumulative data is a low-pass filtered version of the binned data, we first use equation (1) to fit it. The cumulative data will also be presented in a non-parametric fashion in double logarithmic plots to show direct visual confirming evidence of the power law regime (1) close to rupture. The two other formulas (2) and (3) are applied to the cumulative data where a better performence by eq. (3) would indicate the presence of a transition from exponential to a power law increase in the energy release rate as discussed above.

## 4 Analysis of the energy release rate

For the analysis of the energy release rate, a second truncation was made for both the lower and upper ends of the pressure interval. The lower endpoint was defined as the point where the acceleration in the cumulative energy release takes place. The size of this truncation varies considerably from data set to data set. For the files containing data all the way up to $`p_c`$ (data sets 1,2,3,4,6), the upper endpoint was simply chosen as the point where the energy release rate had its maximum, thus removing only a few points. For the two data sets (5,7), where the last point is far from $`p_c`$, no truncation was performed.

The results were encouraging for all data sets. In table 1, we see the values of the physical parameters for the best fit of each data set with equation (2). Use of equation (1) for the energy release rate is unreliable due to the huge fluctuations shown in figure 1. The fits were performed using the “amoeba-search” algorithm  minimizing the variance of the fit to the data. We stress that all three linear variables $`A`$, $`B`$ and $`C`$ are slaved to the other nonlinear variables by imposing the condition that, at a local minimum, the variance has zero first derivative with respect these variables. Hence, they should not be regarded as free parameters, but are calculated solving three linear equations using standard techniques including pivoting. Note, in addition, that the phase $`\varphi `$ in (2) is just a (pressure) unit and the coefficients $`A`$, $`B`$ and $`C`$ have all dimensions of energy. The key physical variables are thus $`p_c`$, $`z`$ and $`\omega `$.

The corresponding plots are shown in figure 1. The best fit is defined as the fit with the lowest r.m.s. (root-mean-square) as well as reasonable values for $`\omega `$. Specifically, this means that we do not consider solutions with $`\omega \stackrel{<}{}1`$ and $`\omega \stackrel{>}{}14`$. The reason is that too large values for $`\omega `$ indicates noise-fitting. This means that for data set 5 and 7, the minimum with the lowest r.m.s. was discarded because $`\omega =25`$ and $`\omega =17`$, respectively. For data set 5, we list the two best minima. Too small values for $`\omega `$ mean that the fit is not truly log-periodic with less than one oscillation. The corresponding log-periodic correction to the pure power law is thus not valid.

Table 1 shows that the log-angular frequencies $`\omega `$ cluster around two values $`\omega 5`$ or $`\omega 10`$, corresponding to a frequency multiplexing (doubling), as observed also in diffusion-limited-aggregation (frequency doubling)  and in 2D-freely decaying turbulence (frequency tripling) . Another noticeable feature is that the exponent is rather well defined at $`z1.4\pm 0.7`$, notwithstanding the well-known difficulties in estimating critical exponents, especially in such noisy data as analysed here. The values obtained for the critical pressure $`p_c`$ are all rather close to the last point in the data sets with the exception of the second minimum for data set 5. This means that eq. (2) does a good job of parameterising the data in a consistent manner for all seven data sets. However, it does not provide the correct value for $`p_c`$ when the last data point is far away from $`p_c`$ indicating that the energy release rate might not be the best quantity to analyze in order to obtain a predictive power. We will hence switch to the cumulative distribution in order to investigate this aspect as well as further test the critical point concept.

## 5 Analysis of the cumulative energy release

### 5.1 Power laws

Due to the noisy nature of data in general and especially the acoustic emission data analyzed here, a power law fit is not always numerically stable. The reason is the following: if the data exhibits rather large fluctuation in the end part, the search algorithm used in the optimization process of the fit will not necessarily find a local minimum for any choice of $`p_c`$ larger than the last point $`p_{last}`$, driving the search towards a choice $`p_c<p_{last}`$ and thus creating a numerical instability. Of the 7 data sets considered here only 4 data sets, sets 1,2,5,7 achieved (a single) numerically stable power law fit for the entire data interval (except the part below 100 bars that has been omitted as previously mentioned) as shown in figure 2. Data sets 3 and 4 had to be truncated in the lower end at a point where a change of regime could be identified as a “kink” in the curve. Data set 6 could not be parameterised by a power law due to a kink in the last part of the data. In table 2, the values for the physical parameters $`p_c`$ and $`z`$ are listed. We see that only for data sets 3 and 4 the power law does a good job of estimating $`p_c`$ whereas it overshoots for data sets 1 and 2. For data sets 5 and 7 where the last point is far away from $`p_c`$, only in the first case do we get a reasonable estimate of $`p_c`$.

Figure 3 provides a non-parametric visual test of the critical point concept. We show the logarithm of the cumulative energy release as a function of the logarithm in base $`10`$ of the distance $`\left(p_cp\right)/p_c`$ to the critical rupture pressure $`p_c`$ determined from the fits shown in figure 2. While the power law regime qualified by a straight line in this representation does not extend to many decades, the plots shown in figure 3 are nevertheless suggestive of a critical point. The relative limited range of pressure-to-failure $`\left(p_cp\right)/p_c`$ defining the critical regime is defined by the resolution in pressure which is here no better than one bar and thus limits the investigation of the energy release rate closer to the rupture.

The over-all conclusion of the analysis presented here is that a pure power law does a reasonable job of parameterising the cumulative data but does not seem to provide for a predictive tool: truncating the data in the upper end will only increase the over-shooting. We hence have to move beyond pure power laws in order to be able to use the cumulative energy release for prediction purposes. It is not very surprising that a pure power law fails to capture essential features of the data. Whether one believes in log-periodic oscillations or not, the analysis presented in the previous section clearly shows that the energy release rate is quite intermittent. The low-pass filtering performed in calculating the cumulative energy release have reduced these fluctuations to a large extent but clearly not enough. Secondly, it is clear that a truncation of the data in the lower end is necessary in order to identify the transition point to a power law acceleration. In fact, the identification of this transition point between random and cooperative behavior may very well be the crux when it comes to predictability.

We will thus investigate whether eq.’s (2) and eq. (3) do a better job of parameterising the cumulative data. The rationale behind the last extension to eq. (3) is that we cannot hope for a prediction capability if we cannot to a reasonable extent capture the features of the full data set which contains a transition in the acceleration of the energy release rate.

### 5.2 Beyond Pure Power Laws

#### 5.2.1 Fit with equation 2

It is well-known that calculating the cumulative of some quantity effectively corresponds to performing a low-pass filtering thus diminishing fluctuations in the data. However, it will not completely remove them and thus a residue of the oscillations found in section 4 should still be present in the data. Furthermore, adding an extra degree of freedom in the equation to be fitted will remove the problem with the numerical instability, since by the very nature of the experiments the fluctuation around some average behaviour will be slower for low pressures and more rapid for higher pressures. Eq.’s (2) and (3) exactly takes such a behaviour into account. This means that from a purely technical perspective, eq.’s (2) and (3) offers significant advantages to eq. (1).

In figure 4, we see the fits of the 7 data sets with eq. (2). Whereas the fits with eq. (1) in all cases only provided us with a single fit (or in the case of data set 6 none), we now have several solutions per time series. The fits shown in figure 4 and the corresponding parameter values listed in table 3 are those of the best fit which full-fills the criteria previously given. Data set 2 did not give any such fits, since $`\omega 1`$ for all of them.

#### 5.2.2 Fit with equation 3

As previously mentioned, a transition point exists where the acceleration in the energy release rate increases significantly. Standard theoretical arguments from critical phenomena  suggest that the acceleration is approximately exponential before the transition point and goes to a power law after the transition point up to the critical point, hence defining the so-called critical region. As a justification of eq.(3), we stress that such a cross-over has already been studied in detail in a numerical model of rupture . We thus propose that eq. (3) might provide a better fit of the data sets without the need of truncation as was the case in section 4. By using eq.(3), we are introducing an additional parameter, the typical width $`\tau `$ of the critical region, and a better fit is thus expected. However, if we also get a better estimate of $`p_c`$ and a better predictive power, we can argue that this transition in the acceleration is indeed captured by eq. (3).

Figures 5 and 7 show the fits of the seven data sets with equation 3. Sets 1-4 and 6 have one acceptable solution while two solutions are given for data sets 5 and 7. There are more solutions but most can be discarded or aggregated. The reason for the large number of minima for data sets 3, 4 and 7 is due to a degeneracy with respect to the new parameter $`\tau `$, when the number of data points is small (72, 73 and 119 respectively). Thus, in these data sets, $`\tau `$ is not constrained well. If one insists that two solutions are identical if they have approximately the same values for $`\omega `$ and $`z`$, then the number of minima are reduced to approximately 15, 11 and 5. For data set 5, the best solution is shown together with the solution which had $`\omega `$ closest to $`2\pi `$, a value that has been found repeatedly in previous works  and argued to be close to the universal mean field value . For data set 7, the best solution is shown together with the only solution which did not have $`p_c`$ close to $`p_{last}`$.

Comparing the results presented in table 3 and 4, a major improvement is obtained for data sets 1 and 2 by using eq. (3) compared to eq. (2). For data sets 3, 5 and 7, the improvement is minor while, for data sets 4 and 6, we get the same solutions. Hence, the overall conclusion is that eq. (3) better captures important features in the data and supports the idea of a transition in the acceleration of the energy release rate from exponential to power law.

## 6 Prediction of the critical pressure of rupture

Armed with these empirical tests of the concept of critical rupture, prediction should in principle be possible by extrapolation of the acoustic emission data using the theoretical formulas. This scheme is similar to that proposed by Voight to describe and predict rate-dependent material failure , based on the use of an empirical power law relation supposed to be followed by an observable variable. However, Voight’s procedure is impractical due to the narrowness of the domain of validity of the pure power law, preventing a realistic implementation of the prediction. This will be confirmed by our tests presented below with equation (1). In order to extend the domain of validity beyond the rather narrow critical region, we are going to test for the predictive merits of eq.’s (2) and (3).

The question we now address is whether we can use eq.’s (1), (2) and (3) in order to predict from the value of $`p_c`$ the approximate value of the pressure at rupture. Data sets 5 and 7 being incomplete, i.e., having acoustic emissions recorded up to a value $`p_{\mathrm{last}}`$ far from the pressure at rupture ($`11\%`$ below $`p_c`$ for data set 5 and $`17\%`$ below $`p_c`$ for data set 7), this prediction question has already been answered to some extent. For data set 5, eq. (1) gave just as good result as eq. (3), the result with eq. (2) being slightly worse. Choosing the second solution for eq. (3), the estimate of $`p_c`$ in these three cases was obtained with an error of $`6\%`$, $`9\%`$ and $`7\%`$, respectively. For data set 7, eq. (1) and (2) only gave solutions with $`p_cp_{\mathrm{last}}`$, the usual signature that the prediction is not reliable because it is controlled by the very last acceleration. In contrast, eq. (3) produces a better solution with an error of $`12\%`$ which can be compared with the difference of $`17\%`$ between $`p_c`$ and $`p_{\mathrm{last}}`$.

Since the results for data set 7 using the entire data set are not very good (presumably because $`p_{last}`$ is so far away from $`p_c`$), it does not seem reasonable to include this data set in in a prediction scheme. Of the remaining data sets, the first prediction attempt for data set 1 was made for $`p676`$, for data set 2 it was $`629`$, for data set 3 it was $`742`$, for data set 4 it was $`733`$ and for data set 6 (which had no solutions for eq. (1)) it was $`688`$. These truncations were based on purely numerical consideration, i.e., how many data points can one afford to remove without severely increasing the degeneracy of the cost-function used in the optimization of the fit. As a consequence, a maximum of 30 points were removed from the larger data sets ($`170`$ points for data sets 1,2,5 and 6) and 20 points from the smaller data sets ($`70`$ for data sets 3 and 4).

As we can see from table 5, the prediction performance of eq (1) is quite bad and only data set 5 gives something interesting.

In tables 6 to 11, we see the corresponding results using eq. (2). Again the the prediction performance is not good.

In tables 12 to 17 we see the corresponding results using eq. (3). When two solutions are given, the first is the best fit and the second is the best fit with $`\omega `$ closest to $`2\pi `$. If two fits have $`\omega `$’s approximately at the same distance from $`2\pi `$ then both are listed. If only one fit is listed, then $`\omega `$ of this fit was also closest to $`2\pi `$. We also demand that $`p_c`$ is not very close to $`p_{last}`$. The reason for including these additional fits is to illustrate whether one always get a solution with a $`p_c`$ close to the true $`p_c`$ or not.

As mentioned, numerical degeneracy of the cost-function used in the optimization of the fit with eq.’s (2) and (3) can be a problem when the number of data points is not large. Hence, we have recorded the predicted $`p_c`$ as a function of $`p_{last}`$ for all fits with eq.’s (2) and (3) obeying the constraints on $`\omega `$ previously mentioned. The results are shown in figures 7 and 8. Whereas no pattern can be identified using eq. (2) we do see a clustering around the true $`t_c`$ using eq. (3) for all data sets except 6.

## 7 Conclusion

Considering the limited quality of the data recorded in a sub-optimal industrial environment, it is quite interesting that a reasonably clear picture has emerged from the analysis presented here. Beginning with the log-periodic analysis of the energy release rate, it is remarkable that the parameter values for the exponent $`z`$ and log-periodic angular frequency $`\omega `$ obtained from the fits with eq. (2) to the 7 first data set actually agree on $`z1.4\pm 0.7`$ and $`\omega 5`$ or $`\omega 10`$ corresponding to a frequency doubling as seen in table 2. Furthermore, from figures 2 and 3, it is clear that at least 6 of the data sets exhibit an average power law acceleration as $`pp_c`$. The consistent results obtained for the energy release rate with respect to log-periodic oscillations is reasonably confirmed by the results obtained with eq. (3), see table 4 and figures 5 and 7. Comparing these results with those obtained with eq. (2) suggest that the cumulative energy release does exhibit a transition from an approximately exponential increase to that of a power law, in agreement with the numerical simulations of Sornette and Andersen . Additional support for such a transition comes from the better predictions results obtained using eq. (3) instead of eq. (2).

The general results for the predictive power of eq. (1), (2) and (3) is that the first two equation does not perform at all. The results with eq. (3) are more positive. For data set 1, we get a suggestion for $`p_c720`$ bars already at $`p_{last}682`$ bars. For data set 2, we start to get a reasonable stable estimate $`p_c68090`$ bars for $`p_{\mathrm{last}}651`$ bars with some prior indications down to $`p_{\mathrm{last}}621`$ bars. For data set 3, the results are not very convincing, but we do get solutions close to the true $`p_c`$. It is interesting to note that if we only consider solutions with $`\omega 2\pi `$, the we get a good estimate for $`p_{\mathrm{last}}752`$ bars. Remarkably, the same is true for data set 4 all the way down to the lowest pressure of $`733`$ bars used. Data set 5 is as mentioned incomplete, the last point being $`85`$ bars away from $`p_c`$. For this data set, we get a reasonable estimate on $`p_c`$ if we focus on solutions with $`\omega 2\pi `$ for $`p_{\mathrm{last}}`$ in the range of $`689701`$. For higher pressures, the fits lock on $`p_c`$ close to the last point in the untruncated data set. The results for data set 7 are very mixed without any clear pattern.

As seen in figure 8, using all fits shows that a predictive potential of eq. (3) exists since a clustering of the predicted $`p_c`$’s occurs around the true $`p_c`$ for all data sets except one (data set 7). This suggests that for a better controlled experimental situation, a reliable prediction procedure based on eq. (3) can be achieved.

Acknowledgements: We thank J.-C. Anifrani from Aérospatiale-Matra Inc., Bordeaux, France, for sharing the data with us. This research was supported by NSF under the grant NSF-DMR99-71475.