A new statistical distribution function for self-affine crack roughness parameters

The statistical topography of rupture lines in paper is studied. A new distribution function is introduced to characterize the crack roughness statistics. This function is employed to fit experimental data on the crack-length and crackwidth sample distributions for four kinds of paper. In all cases, the chi-squared test for the goodness of fit yields a significance level better than 0.97. The physical implications of experimental results are discussed.