A trial for forecasting earthquakes from clarifying the critical state of a sandpile

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Focusing on the similarities between avalanches in sandpile experiments and earthquake occurrence, we performed two-dimensional sandpile experiments using a photo-elastic material in order to clarify the internal structure of a sandpile prior to large avalanches, namely in a critical state. The results of the analysis show that in large sandpiles, stress chains almost parallel to the surface slope are created which seems to organize the critical state. In contrast, small sandpiles have no such a clear structure of stress chains. This fact may bring the differences in the behavior of the avalanches between the large and small sandpiles.