2024/09/17 by Qinghua Lei, Didier Sornette, Lei, Qinghua +1
Decision Sciences · Engineering · Environmental Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics (physics.geo-ph) #Landslides and related hazards #Risk and Safety Analysis #Rock Mechanics and Modeling
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.11455
openalex publication_date 2024/09/17 · openalex created_date 2024/10/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Catastrophic failures have momentous impact in many scientific and technological fields but remain challenging to understand and predict. One key difficulty lies in the burstiness of rupture phenomena, which typically involve a series of progressively shorter quiescent phases punctuated by sudden bursts, rather than a smooth continuous progression. This seemingly erratic pattern challenges the conventional power law assumption of continuous scale invariance. Here, we propose a generalized material failure law based on the log-periodic power law, which better captures the discrete scale invariance inherent in intermittent rupture dynamics. Our method's superiority is demonstrated through testing on 109 historical geohazard events, including landslides, rockbursts, glacier breakoffs, and volcanic eruptions. The results indicate that our method is general and robust, offering significant potential to forecast catastrophic failures.