Criticality Hidden in Acoustic Emissions and in Changing Electrical Resistance during Fracture of Rocks and Cement-Based Materials

Acoustic emissions (AE) due to microcracking in solid materials permit the monitoring of fracture processes and the study of failure dynamics. As an alternative method of integrity assessment, measurements of electrical resistance can be used as well. In the literature, however, many studies connect the notion of criticality with AE originating from the fracture, but not with the changes in the electrical properties of materials. In order to further investigate the possible critical behavior of fracture processes in rocks and cement-based materials, we apply natural time (NT) analysis to the time series of AE and resistance measurements, recorded during fracture experiments on cement mortar (CM) and Luserna stone (LS) specimens. The NT analysis indicates that criticality in terms of electrical resistance changes systematically precedes AE criticality for all investigated specimens. The observed greater unpredictability of the CM fracture behavior with respect to LS could be ascribed to the different degree of material homogeneity, since LS (heterogeneous material) expectedly offers more abundant and more easily identifiable fracture precursors than CM (homogenous material). Non-uniqueness of the critical point by varying the detection threshold of cracking events is apparently due to finite size effects which introduce deviations from the self-similarity.