Localizing signatures of catastrophic failure (LOCAT)

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Complex materials, like ceramics, rocks and the Earth's crust, often break in a catastrophic manner, after a long period of sustained or fluctuating stress. Similar catastrophic failure events also happen in biological and social systems, as mass extinctions, tipping points, and stock market crashes, and a range of tools have been developed to address these under the general framework of 'complexity science'. Here we will use these tools to look for patterns of behaviour, and their underlying causes, in the transition from the relatively stable phase of stressing a composite natural or synthetic material to its ultimate failure. We will focus on disordered porous media such as natural rocks and combine characterization using high-resolution C-T scanning with numerical modelling of the deformation and failure process, and analysis of laboratory and natural data on deformation up to the geophysical scale, in order to address the following questions.I. What role does localisation of deformation play in global acceleration to failure?II. What is the predictability of the acceleration phase in statistical terms?III. Are there any universal signatures of the spatio-temporal evolution of damage which permit lifetime estimates for single samples?IV. What are the scaling relations that link simulations and laboratory tests to the geophysical scale.