Acoustic emission cascade predicting progression to failure of rock and bone

• Acoustic Emission (AE) escalates in terminal stages of failure for rock and bone. • Trend of inverse AE energy rate predicts time to failure in both materials. • Material collapse is consistent with a rate dependent material failure model. • Indicates feedback loop between AE energy rate and cumulative AE energy. Quasi brittle materials such as rock and bone are understood to fail via microcrack coalescence. The accompanying Acoustic Emission (AE) event rate is known to increase as failure progresses. Here we examine the progression of the AE event rate for both rock and bone under conditions where failure progresses under constant loading. The experiments for rock entail subjecting granite beams to a constant loading under three point bending and monitoring the time-dependent failure. For bone, human cadaver skulls are loaded under pinning loads similar to those used for immobilization of the head for neurosurgical procedures. AE rates are shown to be consistent with a rate dependent material failure law including a quasi-linear cascade of the inverse AE energy rate in the lead up to failure that is shown here to arise because of a coupling wherein a response rate is a power law of a driver and the driver is, in turn, a power law of the accumulated response. For both materials and experimental configurations this cascade provides warning of impending failure. For granite beams there is accurate prediction of failure time over the final 30% of the specimens’ lifetimes, which ranged from 35 s to two days. For skull fracture, the commencement of the failure cascade provides 30–70 s for warning of failure, which would be sufficient for basic remedial action to avoid patient injury in a surgical application.