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Energy bursts in fiber bundle models of composite materials

As a model of composite materials, a bundle of many fibers with stochastically distributed breaking thresholds for the individual fibers is considered. The bundle is loaded until complete failure to capture the failure scenario of composite materials under external load. The fibers are assumed to share the load equally, and to obey Hookean elasticity right up to the breaking point. We determine the distribution of bursts in which an amount of energy $E$ is released. The energy distribution follows asymptotically a universal power law $E^{-5/2}$, for any statistical distribution of fiber strengths. A similar power law dependence is found in some experimental acoustic emission studies of loaded composite materials.