RESEARCH PAPERS : Transition process from nucleation to high-speed rupture propagation: scaling from stick-slip experiments tonatural earthquakes

Details RESEARCH PAPERS : Transition process from nucleation to high-speed rupture propagation: scaling from stick-slip experiments tonatural earthquakes RESEARCH PAPERS : Transition process from nucleation to high-speed rupture propagation: scaling from stick-slip experiments tonatural earthquakes

Jan 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998geoji.132...14s&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Journal International, Volume 132, Issue 1, pp. 14-30.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

30

Critical Weakening Displacement, Fundamental Scaling Relations, Slow Initial Phase, Transition Process, Weak-Zone Size

Scientific paper

The process of earthquake generation is governed by a coupled non-linear system consisting of the equation of motion in elastodynamics and a fault constitutive relation. On the basis of the results of stick-slip experiments we constructed a theoretical source model with a slip-dependent constitutive law. Using the theoretical source model, we simulated the transition process numerically from quasi-static nucleation to high-speed rupture propagation and succeeded in quantitatively explaining the three phases observed in stick-slip experiments, that is very slow (1 cm s-1 ) quasi-static nucleation preceding the onset of dynamic rupture, dynamic but slow (10 m s-1 ) rupture growth without seismic-wave radiation, and subsequent high-speed (2 km s-1 ) rupture propagation. Theoretical computation of far-field waveforms with this model shows that a slow initial phase preceding the main P phase expected from a classical source model is radiated in the accelerating stage from the slow dynamic rupture growth to the high-speed rupture propagation. On the assumption that the physical law governing rupture processes in natural earthquakes is essentially the same as that in stick-slip events, we scaled the theoretical source model explaining the stick-slip experiments to the case of natural earthquakes so that the scaled source model explains the observed average stress drop, the critical nucleation-zone size, and the duration of the slow initial phase well. The physical parameters prescribing the source model are the weak-zone size L , the critical weakening displacement Dc , the breakdown strength drop τb , and the rigidity μ of the surrounding elastic medium. In scaling these parameters, we held a non-dimensional controlling parameter μ' = (μDc )/(τb L ) in numerical simulation constant. From the results of scaling we found the following fundamental relations between the source parameters: (1) the critical weakening displacement Dc is in proportion to the weak-zone size L , but (2) the breakdown strength drop τb is independent of L .

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