  The effects of bond randomness on the ground-state structure, phase diagram
and critical behavior of the square lattice ferromagnetic Blume-Capel (BC)
model are discussed. The calculation of ground states at strong disorder and
large values of the crystal field is carried out by mapping the system onto a
network and we search for a minimum cut by a maximum flow method. In finite
temperatures the system is studied by an efficient two-stage Wang-Landau (WL)
method for several values of the crystal field, including both the first- and
second-order phase transition regimes of the pure model. We attempt to explain
the enhancement of ferromagnetic order and we discuss the critical behavior of
the random-bond model. Our results provide evidence for a strong violation of
universality along the second-order phase transition line of the random-bond
version.

Statistical Mechanics;Disordered Systems and Neural Networks