Physical systems characterized by stick-slip dynamics often display avalanches. Regardless of the diversity of their microscopic structure, these systems are governed by a power-law distribution of avalanche size and duration. Here we focus on the interevent times between avalanches and show that, unlike their distributions of size and duration, the interevent time distributions are able to distinguish different mechanical states of the system, characterized by different volume fractions or confining pressures. We use experiments on granular systems and numerical simulations of emulsions to show that systems having the same probability distribution for avalanche size and duration can have different interevent time distributions. Remarkably, for large packing ratios, these interevent time distributions look similar to those for earthquakes and are indirect evidence of large space-time correlations in the system. Our results therefore indicate that interevent time statistics are more informative to characterize the dynamics of avalanches. arXiv:1906.09897v1 [cond-mat.soft]
We propose a new approach for generating synthetic earthquake catalogues based on the physics of soft glasses. The continuum approach produces yield-stress materials based on Lattice-Boltzmann simulations. We show that, if the material is stimulated below yield stress, plastic events occur, which have strong similarities with seismic events. Based on a suitable definition of displacement in the continuum, we show that the plastic events obey a Gutenberg-Richter law with exponents similar to those for real earthquakes. We further find that average acceleration, energy release, stress drop and recurrence times scale with the same exponent. The approach is fully self-consistent and all quantities can be calculated at all scales without the need of ad hoc friction or statistical laws. We therefore suggest that our approach may lead to new insight into understanding of the physics connecting the micro and macro scale of earthquakes.
Using a multi-component lattice Boltzmann (LB) model, we perform fluid kinetic simulations of confined and concentrated emulsions. The system presents the phenomenology of soft-glassy materials, including a Herschel–Bulkley rheology, yield stress, ageing and long relaxation time scales. Shearing the emulsion in a Couette cell below the yield stress results in plastic topological re-arrangement events which follow established empirical seismic statistical scaling laws, making this system a good candidate to study the physics of earthquakes. One characteristic of this model is the tendency for events to occur in avalanche clusters, with larger events, triggering subsequent re-arrangements. While seismologists have developed statistical tools to study correlations between events, a process to confirm causality remains elusive. We present here, a modification to our LB model, involving small, fast vibrations applied to individual droplets, effectively a macroscopic forcing, which results in the arrest of the topological plastic re-arrangements. This technique provides an excellent tool for identifying causality in plastic event clusters by examining the evolution of the dynamics after ‘stopping’ an event, and then checking which subsequent events disappear.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Fluid dynamics, soft matter and complex systems: recent results and new methods’.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.