The phrase "close to critical" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe situations or circumstances that are almost reaching a state of being critical or serious, but not quite there yet. For example, "The situation in the refugee camp is close to critical, with food and supplies running low."
Kirsty Davies, the IWA's deputy director, said: "While this slip does not bring us perilously close to critical mass it is a worrying slide in the wrong direction".
Addressing a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit in Kazakhstan last week, Vladimir Putin said the situation in Afghanistan was "close to critical".
Present-day thinking is that the universe is very close to flat (Euclidean) in its geometry, which implies that it is close to critical density.
But few contemporary poets regard rock lyrics with anything close to critical admiration.Paul Muldoon may be the exception to this rule.
And conversely, added Dr. Kelly, the mathematician, "when the system is close to critical levels, very small increases in traffic can create time delays for everyone".
The entrenchment can be explained by a strong nonlinear dependence of the transport law on the slope when the shear stress is close to critical.
By distributing actuation closer to critical regions of the tool, adaptability to local conditions for increased robustness and greater process flexibility is achieved.
Thus, the initial deep exfoliation on 3 August 2014 may have brought stresses closer to critical in the thinner, surficial sheets at the top of the dome.
It includes the performance of close-to-critical regenerative Brayton cycles, which opens a broad field of cycle possibilities with low pressure ratios (very simple turbines) complemented with large but standard heat exchangers as regenerators.
Considering an already close-to-critical pressure state, the physical equilibrium beneath mineral caps or above chilling margins of magma bodies can be easily disturbed by major tectonic earthquakes, which can induce volcanic unrest (magmatic or not) or eventually trigger phreatic or phreatomagmatic eruptions (Brodsky et al. [1998]; Ichihara and Brodsky [2006]; Manga and Brodsky [2006]).
Far from the critical point the maximum changes are 0.7% and 3.1%, whereas close to the critical point maximum changes of 3.4% and 10.3% are observed.
