Fractal-like frontier structure of avalanches in a sandpile model

Abstract

Abstract The self-organized criticality (SOC) phenomena for dynamical systems with spatial degrees of freedom is commonly observed in application to different aspects of natural sciences. In our study we also consider our sandpile model as such a system. Since the first mention in 1987, a sandpile model, which is a common example of spatiotemporal evolution, became widely applied for avalanche-like processes. With a simple computer simulation we show that an avalanche as a result of natural system evolution has a fractal border structure, and approves SOC phenomena of a sandpile model. We also demonstrate Gutenberg-Richter dependence for avalanche process in a sandpile model.