This introductory article presents the special Discussion and Debate volume “From black
swans to dragon-kings, is there life beyond power laws?” We summarize and put in …

The fiber bundle model describes a collection of elastic fibers under load. The fibers fail
successively and, for each failure, the load distribution among the surviving fibers changes …

Concepts, methods and techniques of statistical physics in the study of correlated, as well as
uncorrelated, phenomena are being applied ever increasingly in the natural sciences …

Disorder and long-range interactions are two of the key components that make material
failure an interesting playfield for the application of statistical mechanics. The cornerstone in …

We test the concept that seismicity prior to a large earthquake can be understood in terms of
the statistical physics of a critical phase transition. In this model, the cumulative seismic …

В книге намечены контуры исследовательской программы, связанной с построением
математической теории безопасности и риска, стратегии и практики управления …

We propose that catastrophic events are “outliers” with statistically different properties than
the rest of the population and result from mechanisms involving amplifying critical cascades …

The anelastic deformation of solids is often treated using continuum damage mechanics. An
alternative approach to the brittle failure of a solid is provided by the discrete fibre-bundle …

We review and discuss recent progress in modelling non-linear and non-local transport
processes in heterogeneous media. The non-locality that we consider is caused by long …

Basquin's law of fatigue states that the lifetime of the system has a power-law dependence
on the external load amplitude, tf∼ σ 0-α, where the exponent α has a strong material …