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Indexed by:期刊论文

Date of Publication:2009-04-15

Journal:PHYSICA A-STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS

Included Journals:SCIE、EI、Scopus

Volume:388

Issue:8

Page Number:1731-1737

ISSN No.:0378-4371

Key Words:Cascading failure; Scale-free network; BA network; Attack; Breakdown probability

Abstract:Most previous existing works on cascading failures only focused on attacks on nodes rather than on edges. In this paper, we discuss the response of scale-free networks subject to two different attacks on edges during cascading propagation, i.e., edge removal by either the descending or ascending order of the loads. Adopting a cascading model with a breakdown probability p of an overload edge and the initial load (k(i)k(j))(alpha) of an edge ij, where k(i) and k(j) are the degrees of the nodes connected by the edge ij and alpha is a tunable parameter, we investigate the effects of two attacks for the robustness of Barabasi-Albert (BA) scale-free networks against cascading failures. In the case of alpha < 1, our investigation by the numerical Simulations leads to a counterintuitive finding that BA scale-free networks are more sensitive to attacks on the edges with the lowest loads than the ones with the highest loads, not relating to the breakdown probability. In addition, the same effect of two attacks in the case of alpha = 1 may be useful in furthering studies on the control and defense of cascading failures in many real-life networks. We then confirm by the theoretical analysis these results observed in Simulations. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.