CONTINGENT SENSITIVITY TO CONFIGURATION IN A NONLINEAR EVOLUTION SYSTEM

A trans-scopic sensitivity of macroscopic failure to slight differenti ation in the meso-scopic structure of a system with nonlinear evolutio n is reported. A periodical chain following a non-local load-sharing e volution was applied as a propotype in failure study. The results demo nstrate that there is a transition region composed of globally stable (GS) and evolution induced catastrophic (EIC) modes. That is different from a critical threshold as predicted by percolation and renormaliza tion group theories. Moreover, the EIC mode shows a distinctive sample specific behaviour. For instance, some neighbouring initial states ma y evolve into completely different final states, though different init ial states can evolve into the same final states. As an example, a mar ginal configuration of EIC mode, a quasi-Fibonacci skeleton, is constr ucted.