In the quest to determine fault weakening processes that govern earthquake mechanics, it is common to infer the earthquake breakdown energy from seismological measurements. Breakdown energy is observed to scale with slip, which is often attributed to enhanced fault weakening with continued slip or at high slip rates, possibly caused by flash heating and thermal pressurization. However, seismologically inferred breakdown energy varies by more than six orders of magnitude and is frequently found to be negative-valued. This casts doubts about the common interpretation that breakdown energy is a proxy for the fracture energy, a material property which must be positive-valued and is generally observed to be relatively scale independent. Here, we present a dynamic model that demonstrates that breakdown energy scaling can occur despite constant fracture energy and does not require thermal pressurization or other enhanced weakening. Instead, earthquake breakdown energy scaling occurs simply due to scale-invariant stress drop overshoot, which may be affected more directly by the overall rupture mode – crack-like or pulse-like – rather than from a specific slip-weakening relationship.
- Award ID(s):
- 1724686
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10328592
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Solid Earth
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1869-9529
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2283 to 2302
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Determining conditions for earthquake slip on faults is a key goal of fault mechanics highly relevant to seismic hazard. Previous studies have demonstrated that enhanced dynamic weakening (EDW) can lead to dynamic rupture of faults with much lower shear stress than required for rupture nucleation. We study the stress conditions before earthquake ruptures of different sizes that spontaneously evolve in numerical simulations of earthquake sequences on rate‐and‐state faults with EDW due to thermal pressurization of pore fluids. We find that average shear stress right before dynamic rupture (aka shear prestress) systematically varies with the rupture size. The smallest ruptures have prestress comparable to the local shear stress required for nucleation. Larger ruptures weaken the fault more, propagate over increasingly under‐stressed areas due to dynamic stress concentration, and result in progressively lower average prestress over the entire rupture. The effect is more significant in fault models with more efficient EDW. We find that, as a result, fault models with more efficient weakening produce fewer small events and result in systematically lower b‐values of the frequency‐magnitude event distributions. The findings (a) illustrate that large earthquakes can occur on faults that appear not to be critically stressed compared to stresses required for slip nucleation; (b) highlight the importance of finite‐fault modeling in relating the local friction behavior determined in the lab to the field scale; and (c) suggest that paucity of small events or seismic quiescence may be the observational indication of mature faults that operate under low shear stress due to EDW.
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null (Ed.)SUMMARY Earthquake ruptures are generally considered to be cracks that propagate as fracture or frictional slip on pre-existing faults. Crack models have been used to describe the spatial distribution of fault offset and the associated static stress changes along a fault, and have implications for friction evolution and the underlying physics of rupture processes. However, field measurements that could help refine idealized crack models are rare. Here, we describe large-scale laboratory earthquake experiments, where all rupture processes were contained within a 3-m long saw-cut granite fault, and we propose an analytical crack model that fits our measurements. Similar to natural earthquakes, laboratory measurements show coseismic slip that gradually tapers near the rupture tips. Measured stress changes show roughly constant stress drop in the centre of the ruptured region, a maximum stress increase near the rupture tips and a smooth transition in between, in a region we describe as the earthquake arrest zone. The proposed model generalizes the widely used elliptical crack model by adding gradually tapered slip at the ends of the rupture. Different from the cohesive zone described by fracture mechanics, we propose that the transition in stress changes and the corresponding linear taper observed in the earthquake arrest zone are the result of rupture termination conditions primarily controlled by the initial stress distribution. It is the heterogeneous initial stress distribution that controls the arrest of laboratory earthquakes, and the features of static stress changes. We also performed dynamic rupture simulations that confirm how arrest conditions can affect slip taper and static stress changes. If applicable to larger natural earthquakes, this distinction between an earthquake arrest zone (that depends on stress conditions) and a cohesive zone (that depends primarily on strength evolution) has important implications for how seismic observations of earthquake fracture energy should be interpreted.more » « less
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Earthquakes vary in size over many orders of magnitude, often rupturing in complex multifault and multievent sequences. Despite the large number of observed earthquakes, the scaling of the earthquake energy budget remains enigmatic. We propose that fundamentally different fracture processes govern small and large earthquakes. We combined seismological observations with physics-based earthquake models, finding that both dynamic weakening and restrengthening effects are non-negligible in the energy budget of small earthquakes. We established a linear scaling relationship between fracture energy and fault size and a break in scaling with slip. We applied this scaling using supercomputing and unveiled large dynamic rupture earthquake cascades involving >700 multiscale fractures within a fault damage zone. We provide a simple explanation for seismicity across all scales with implications for comprehending earthquake genesis and multifault rupture cascades.
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ABSTRACT Frictional heating during earthquake rupture raises the fault-zone fluid pressure, which affects dynamic rupture and seismic radiation. Here, we investigate two key parameters governing thermal pressurization of pore fluids – hydraulic diffusivity and shear-zone half-width – and their effects on earthquake rupture dynamics, kinematic source properties, and ground motions. We conduct 3D strike-slip dynamic rupture simulations assuming a rate-and-state dependent friction law with strong velocity weakening coupled to thermal-pressurization of pore fluids. Dynamic rupture evolution and ground shaking are densely evaluated across the fault and Earth’s surface to analyze the variations of rupture parameters (slip, peak slip rate, rupture speed, and rise time), correlations among rupture parameters, and variability of peak ground velocity. Our simulations reveal how variations in thermal-pressurization affect earthquake rupture properties. We find that the mean slip and rise time decrease with increasing hydraulic diffusivity, whereas mean rupture speed and peak slip-rate remain almost constant. Mean slip, peak slip-rate, and rupture speed decrease with increasing shear-zone half-width, whereas mean rise time increases. Shear-zone half-width distinctly affects the correlation between rupture parameters, especially for parameter pairs (slip, rupture speed), (peak slip-rate, rupture speed), and (rupture speed, rise time). Hydraulic diffusivity has negligible effects on these correlations. Variations in shear-zone half-width primarily impact rupture speed, which then may affect other rupture parameters. We find a negative correlation between slip and peak slip-rate, unlike simpler dynamic rupture models. Mean peak ground velocities decrease faster with increasing shear-zone half-width than with increasing hydraulic diffusivity, whereas ground-motion variability is similarly affected by both the parameters. Our results show that shear-zone half-width affects rupture dynamics, kinematic rupture properties, and ground shaking more strongly than hydraulic diffusivity. We interpret the importance of shear-zone half-width based on the characteristic time of diffusion. Our findings may inform pseudodynamic rupture generators and guide future studies on how to account for thermal-pressurization effects.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5194/se-11-2283-2020
