Avalanches and post-avalanche relaxation processes

The non-elastic mechanical response of most materials occurs through impulsive and discrete events known as avalanches, which arise when a microscopic local region rapidly deforms, leading to a macroscopic strain change. Due to their transient nature and small spatial and temporal scales, studying avalanches experimentally poses significant challenges. Existing methods often suffer from insufficient sensitivity, such as in force measurements, or lack clear correlations between measured signals and the underlying physical processes, like with acoustic emission. In this work, we introduce a new experimental method using an acceleration measurement of avalanche events through a mass-spring system connected in line with the tested sample. We performed simultaneous measurements of force drops, acceleration, and acoustic emissions originating concurrently from the same avalanches during twinning deformation in a magnesium single crystal.