Force fluctuation in a driven elastic chain

Abstract

We study the dynamics of an elastic chain driven on a disordered substrate and analyze numerically the statistics of force fluctuations at the depinning transition. The probability distribution function of the amplitude of the slip events for small velocities is a power law with an exponent $+AFw-tau$ depending on the driving velocity. This result is in qualitative agreement with experimental measurements performed on sliding elastic surfaces with macroscopic asperities. We explore the properties of the depinning transition as a function of the driving mode (i.e. constant force or constant velocity) and compute the force-velocity diagram using finite size scaling methods. The scaling exponents are in excellent agreement with the values expected in interface models and, contrary to previous studies, we found no difference in the exponents for periodic and disordered chains.