DOI: 10.1051/jp1:1995187
J. Phys. I France 5 (1995) 1135-1141

Self-Organized Criticality in a Model for Fracture on Fibrous Materials

A.T. Bernardes¹ and J.G. Moreira<sup>2

1</sup>  Departamento de Física, Instituto de Ciências Exatas e Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Campus do Morro do Cruzeiro, 35410-000 Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil
²  Departamento de Física, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, C.P. 702, 30161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

(Received 17 May 1995, received in final form 27 May 1995, accepted 2 June 1995)

Abstract
We investigate the existence of self-organized criticality on a model to describe the failure process in fibrous materials. This model consists of identical parallel fibers which are pulled with constant velocity. The rupture probability of each fiber depends on the elastic energy of the fiber and on the number of unbroken neighboring fibers. In the brittle-ductile transition, we have observed a power law behaviour on the number of cracks versus its size. This indicates that, in this region, the model shows self-organized criticality and the fracture pattern can be a fractal. The power law exponent is not universal, but depends on the temperature and traction velocity.

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