The Underlying Driving Forces of Multiple-Modal Statistical Behavior

Multiple-modal statistical distributions, which are caused by multiple failure mechanisms and modes, have been observed in several materials for several types of physical entities such as micro-crack size and cycles to failure under fatigue loading. However, the underlying damage mechanisms related to these entities are still not well understood, and the associated modeling is still lacking. In this paper, the possible underlying driving forces of the multiple-modal distribution functions are investigated based on the concept of crack or damage evolution.