Results Distribution of energies of the individual AE events recorded along the whole test. The log-log plot reveals a linear behavior for the four studied rates extending, in the cases with high statistics, more than 6 decades The power-law exponent characterizing criticality has been estimated using a Maximum Likelihood method appropriate for the cases with a high enough number of recorded events, following the numerical techniques proposed in Ref. [2] Fitted exponent using ML as a function of the lower fitting cut-off. The dashed line defines the value of the critical exponent. Conclusion Our experimental results clearly demonstrate that the failure process of a porous material under compression shows avalanche criticality. References [1] E.K.H.Salje, D.E.Soto-Parra, A.Planes, E.Vives, M.Reinecker & W.Schranz “Failure mechanism in porous materials under compression: crackling noise in mesoporous SiO2”; submitted tp Phil. Mag. Lett. (2011) [2] A.Clauset, C.R.Shalizi & M.E.J.Newman SIAM Rev. 51, 661 (2009). Experimental We performed slow compression tests on four prismatic samples of Vycor (89% porosity) with a height of 5mm and areas of 18.23, 29.49, and mm2, at constant stress rates of 12.2 kPa/s, 6.5 kPa/s, 1.6 kPa/s and 0.2 kPa/s, respectively. Samples were placed between two aluminium plates as shown in the figure above. The compression force is applied by supplying water at a constant rate to a container hanging from the upper plate. By this method we can reach a good control of the stress rate applied to the sample. A piezoelectric AE transducer was attached to the upper plate. The electric signals from the transducer were preamplified (60dB) and input in an acquisition system The setup allows for a direct measurement of the energies of the AE events detected above a given threshold (26dB) May (2011) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Workshop on Large Fluctuations and Collective Phenomena in Disordered Materials Crackling noise in mesoporous SiO 2 under compression Abstract Microporous SiO 2, Vycor, has been subjected to slowly increasing compressive stress with stress rates between 0.2 and 12.2 kPa/s. Acoustic Emission experiments found crackling noise with a power law distribution over 6 decades at the slowest stress rate. The power law exponent is Ekhard K.H.Salje 1, Daniel Enrique Soto-Parra2,*, Antoni Planes 2, Eduard Vives 2, Marius Reinecker 3, Wilfried Schranz 3, 1 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, United Kingdom 2 Departament d’Estructura i Constituents de la Matèria, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 647, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. 3 Faculty of Physics, University of Viena, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. AE activity and sample shrinkage as a function of time, corresponding to the experiment driven at 1.6 kPa/s. The total number of recorded signals in this case is N = The inset shows a detail of the initial part of the experiment revealing low AE activity. The large strain relaxation at s corresponds to the big sample crash.