Analysis of damage accumulation at various scale levels

In the context of mechanics of damageing a consideration is given to the problem of damage accumulation in various media, metals included. The analysis of fracturing that develops by stages allowed to conclude about the general features of micro- and macrodefect initiation, accumulation and increasing defect density up to a constant critical value. THen a jump-like growth of defect size occurs, and the process of damage accumulation starts on the subsequent scale level. These regularities are found to be independent of the nature of material or the scale level. The kinetics of damage accumulation prior to earthquakes is just the same as before metal specimen failure during mechanical testing. Hence, metal specimen can serve as a model for investigating processes going on in the crust