title: Fracture strength of disordered media: universality, interactions, and tail asymptotics.
abstract: We study the asymptotic properties of fracture strength distributions of disordered elastic media by a combination of renormalization group, extreme value theory, and numerical simulation. We investigate the validity of the "weakest-link hypothesis" in the presence of realistic long-ranged interactions in the random fuse model. Numerical simulations indicate that the fracture strength is well-described by the Duxbury-Leath-Beale (DLB) distribution which is shown to flow asymptotically to the Gumbel distribution. We explore the relation between the extreme value distributions and the DLB-type asymptotic distributions and show that the universal extreme value forms may not be appropriate to describe the nonuniversal low-strength tail.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy.
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Manzato
authors.forename: Ashivni
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Shekhawat
authors.forename: Phani K V V
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Nukala
authors.forename: Mikko J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Alava
authors.forename: James P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Sethna
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zapperi