Abstract
While martensites subjected to quasi-static deformation are known to exhibit power law distributed acoustic emission in a broad range of scales the origin of the observed scaling behavior and the mechanism for self-organization towards criticality remains obscure. Here, we argue that the power-law structure of intermittent fluctuations can be at least partially attributed to inertia. We build on the insight that inertial dynamics, evidenced by acoustic emission, can become an important factor if the underlying mechanical system is only marginally stable. We first illustrate the possibility of inertia-induced heavy-tailed avalanche size distributions using a prototypical example of a discrete chain with bi-stable springs. We then explore the effects of inertia in fully realistic two- and three-dimensional continuum models of elastic phase transitions. In particular, we demonstrate that a three-dimensional model of this type can produce not only qualitative but also quantitative agreement with experiment.
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