“…Based on analogies with phase transitions, several groups [2]- [12] have proposed that, in heterogeneous materials with disorder such as fiber composites, rocks, concrete under compression and materials with large distributed residual stresses, rupture is a genuine critical point, i.e., the culmination of a self-organization of diffuse damage and micro-cracking characterized by power law signatures. Experiments [2,7,9,11,12], numerical simulations [5,6,8,10] and theory [8] confirm this concept.…”