relation: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/1167/ title: Criticality in models for fracture in disordered media creator: Caldarelli, Guido creator: Castellano, Claudio creator: Petri, Alberto subject: QC Physics description: It has been recently noticed that heterogeneous media undergoing a fracturing process display a set of properties characteristic of systems at the critical state. In the present work we focus on the way in which the critical regime is reached. It is possible to define a branching ratio, for the breaking processses in the material, that represents the probability to trigger future breakdowns given an initial failure. This probability takes the value 1 when the system is critical thereby representing a measure of the distance of the system from the critical state. We show that, although the models considered in literature become really critical only in correspondence of the global failure, different dynamical rules may drive the system close to the critical state at different rates, such that the duration of the “quasi-critical” stage largely varies from model to model. publisher: Elsevier date: 1999-08 type: Article type: PeerReviewed identifier: Caldarelli, Guido and Castellano, Claudio and Petri, Alberto Criticality in models for fracture in disordered media. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 270 (1–2). 15 - 20. ISSN 0378-4371 (1999) relation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437199001454 relation: 10.1016/S0378-4371(99)00145-4