Anomalous Scaling of Fracture Surfaces

Abstract

We argue that fracture surfaces may exhibit anomalous dynamic scaling properties akin to what occurs in some models of kinetic roughening. We determine the complete scaling behavior of the local fluctuations of a brittle fracture in a granite block from experimental data. We obtain a global roughness exponent $\chi = 1.2$ which differs from the local one, $\chi_{loc} = 0.79$. Implications on fracture physics are discussed.