Structure–energy regularities of accumulation of damages during deformation of a heterogeneous material

An experimental research of the defect accumulation under uniaxial loading of a natural heterogeneous material is carried out in this work. Defect formation process has been controlled using two non-destructive techniques (methods) such as acoustic emission (AE) and X-ray computed microtomography (CT). The combined use of these methods made it possible to find out correspondence between energy characteristics of AE accompanying the defect formation and the volume of these defects. It was found that total defect volume is lineary dependent on total AE signal energy. This fact corresponds to previously discovered phenomenological relationships for the sources of tectonic earthquakes. Mean defect size has been estimated based on obtained linear dependence. It was shown that mean linear size of defect does not exceed 100$\mu$m regardless of the assumptions about the defect shape.