Self-organized criticality of plastic shear bands in rocks

We show that the shear bands that appear during the pure shear numerical simulations of rocks with a non‐associated plastic flow rule form fractal networks. The system drives spontaneously into a state in which the length distribution of shear bands follows a power law (self‐organized criticality) with exponent 2.07. The distribution of local gradients in deviatoric strain rate has different scaling exponents for each moment, in particular the geometrical fractal dimension is 1.7. Samples of granodiorite sheared under high confining pressure from the Pyrenees are analyzed and their properties compared with the numerical results.