Self-organized criticality in a rice-pile model

Amaral LAN, Lauritsen KB
Physical Review E 54,  R4512 - R4515 (1996)
Times cited: 34
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Abstract

We present a model for relaxations in piles of granular material. The relaxations are determined by a stochastic rule which models the effect of friction between the grains. We find power-law distributions for avalanche sizes and lifetimes characterized by the exponents tau = 1.53 [/- 0.05 and y = 1.84]{.ul}/- 0.05, respectively. For the discharge events, we find a characteristic size that scales with the system size as L (mu), with mu = 1.20 [/- 0.05. We also find that the frequency of the discharge events decreases with the system size as L (-mu') with mu’ = 1.20]{.ul}/- 0.05.