Constructing constitutive relationships for seismic and aseismic fault slip

Pure and Applied Geophysics
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Abstract

For the purpose of modeling natural fault slip, a useful result from an experimental fault mechanics study would be a physically-based constitutive relation that well characterizes all the relevant observations. This report describes an approach for constructing such equations. Where possible the construction intends to identify or, at least, attribute physical processes and contact scale physics to the observations such that the resulting relations can be extrapolated in conditions and scale between the laboratory and the Earth. The approach is developed as an alternative but is based on Ruina (1983) and is illustrated initially by constructing a couple of relations from that study. In addition, two example constitutive relationships are constructed; these describe laboratory observations not well-modeled by Ruina's equations: the unexpected shear-induced weakening of silica-rich rocks at high slip speed (Goldsby and Tullis, 2002) and fault strength in the brittle ductile transition zone (Shimamoto, 1986). The examples, provided as illustration, may also be useful for quantitative modeling.
Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Constructing constitutive relationships for seismic and aseismic fault slip
Series title Pure and Applied Geophysics
DOI 10.1007/s00024-009-0523-0
Volume 166
Issue 10-11
Year Published 2009
Language English
Publisher Springer
Publisher location Amsterdam, Netherlands
Contributing office(s) Cascades Volcano Observatory
Description 24 p.
Larger Work Type Article
Larger Work Subtype Journal Article
Larger Work Title Pure and Applied Geophysics
First page 1775
Last page 1798
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