The duration-energy-size enigma for acoustic emission

Abstract Acoustic emission (AE) measurements of avalanches in different systems, such as domain movements in ferroics or the collapse of voids in porous materials, cannot be compared with model predictions without a detailed analysis of the AE process. In particular, most AE experiments scale the av...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Blai Casals, Karin A. Dahmen, Boyuan Gou, Spencer Rooke, Ekhard K. H. Salje
Format: article
Language:EN
Published: Nature Portfolio 2021
Subjects:
R
Q
Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/76e1eadfb31c4251bd61ecb54cec20d7
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract Acoustic emission (AE) measurements of avalanches in different systems, such as domain movements in ferroics or the collapse of voids in porous materials, cannot be compared with model predictions without a detailed analysis of the AE process. In particular, most AE experiments scale the avalanche energy E, maximum amplitude Amax and duration D as E ~ A max x and A max  ~ D χ with x = 2 and a poorly defined power law distribution for the duration. In contrast, simple mean field theory (MFT) predicts that x = 3 and χ = 2. The disagreement is due to details of the AE measurements: the initial acoustic strain signal of an avalanche is modified by the propagation of the acoustic wave, which is then measured by the detector. We demonstrate, by simple model simulations, that typical avalanches follow the observed AE results with x = 2 and ‘half-moon’ shapes for the cross-correlation. Furthermore, the size S of an avalanche does not always scale as the square of the maximum AE avalanche amplitude A max as predicted by MFT but scales linearly S ~ A max . We propose that the AE rise time reflects the atomistic avalanche time profile better than the duration of the AE signal.