Optimal paths play a fundamental role in numerous physical applications ranging from random polymers to brittle fracture, from the flow through porous media to information propagation. Here for the first time we explore the path that is activated once this optimal path fails and what happens when this new path also fails and so on, until the system is completely disconnected. In fact many applications can also be found for this novel fracture problem. In the limit of strong disorder, our results show that all the cracks are located on a single self-similar connected line of fractal dimension D(b) approximately = 1.22. For weak disorder, the number of cracks spreads all over the entire network before global connectivity is lost. Strikingly, the disconnecting path (backbone) is, however, completely independent on the disorder.

We study the Dean instability in curved channels using the lattice Boltzmann model for generalized metrics. For this purpose, we first improve and validate the method by measuring the critical Dean number at the transition from laminar to vortex flow for a streamwise curved rectangular channel, obtaining very good agreement with the literature values. Taking advantage of the easy implementation of arbitrary metrics within our model, we study the fluid flow through a doublecurved channel, using ellipsoidal coordinates, and study the transition to vortex flow in dependence of the two perpendicular curvature radii of the channel. We observe not only transitions to 2-cell vortex flow, but also to 4-cell and even 6-cell vortex flow, and we find that the critical Dean number at the transition to 2-cell vortex flow exhibits a minimum when the two curvature radii are approximately equal.