Scaling behavior in explosive fragmentation

We investigate the explosive fragmentation process in two dimensions using molecular-dynamics simulations. We show that the mass distribution of fragm ents follows a power law, with a scaling exponent that is strongly dependen t on the macroscopic characteristics of the system prior to the explosion p rocess. In particular, for thermalized initial configurations at low temper atures, we observe that the exponent is close to -1. We suggest that this r esult can be interpreted in terms of a multiplicative fracture process.