Nonuniversality and scaling breakdown in a nonconservative earthquake model.

We use extensive numerical simulations to test recent claims of universality in the nonconservative regime of the Olami-Feder-Christensen model. By studying larger systems and a wider range of dissipation levels than previously considered we conclude that there is no evidence of universality in the model with only limited regions of the event size distributions displaying power-law behavior. We further analyze the dimension of the largest events in the model, D(max), using a multiscaling method. This reveals that although D(max) initially increases with system size, for larger systems the dimension ultimately decreases with system size casting further doubt on the criticality of the model.