Photon emission as a probe of chaotic processes accompanying fracture

Abstract

Photon emission accompanying the fracture of an epoxy and single crystal MgO is examined for evidence of deterministic chaos by means of the autocorrelation function, the Fourier transform, the correlation integral of Grassberger and Procaccia, and the fractal box dimension. A positive Lyapunov exponent is also obtained from the epoxy phE data. Each of these measures is consistent with a significant degree of deterministic chaos associated with attractors of relatively low dimension. A typical epoxy fracture surface was analyzed for fractal character by means of the slit island technique, yielding a fractal dimension of 1.32 ± 0.03. The fractal dimensions of the fracture surface and the photon emission data (box dimension) of the epoxy are in good agreement. These observations suggest that fluctuations in photon emission intensity during fracture reflect the production of fractal surface features as they are being produced and thus provide important information on the process of dynamic crack growth.