Megathrust earthquakes tend to be confined to fault areas locked in the interseismic period and often rupture them only partially. For example, during the 2015 M7.8 Gorkha earthquake, Nepal, a slip pulse propagating along strike unzipped the bottom edge of the locked portion of the Main Himalayan Thrust (MHT). The lower edge of the rupture produced dominant high-frequency (>1 Hz) radiation of seismic waves. We show that similar partial ruptures occur spontaneously in a simple dynamic model of earthquake sequences. The fault is governed by standard laboratory-based rate-and-state friction with the aging law and contains one homogenous velocity-weakening (VW) region embedded in a velocity-strengthening (VS) area. Our simulations incorporate inertial wave-mediated effects during seismic ruptures (they are thus fully dynamic) and account for all phases of the seismic cycle in a self-consistent way. Earthquakes nucleate at the edge of the VW area and partial ruptures tend to stay confined within this zone of higher prestress, producing pulse-like ruptures that propagate along strike. The amplitude of the high-frequency sources is enhanced in the zone of higher, heterogeneous stress at the edge of the VW area.
Many large and damaging earthquakes on mature faults in the Earth’s crust propagate along layers of rock gouge, the fine granular material produced by comminution during sliding. Characterizing gouge rheology is of paramount importance to improve our understanding of earthquake physics, as friction controls key processes of earthquakes, including nucleation, propagation and arrest and how damaging they can be.  In this work, we characterize friction evolution in rock gouge layers during the propagation of dynamic ruptures in a laboratory setting. The experimental setup features a hybrid configuration with a specimen made of an analog material and a rock gouge layer embedded along the interface. This configuration allows us to trigger dynamic ruptures due to the lower shear modulus of the analogue material while at the same time study the gouge frictional behavior during spontaneously evolving dynamic events. Ruptures are captured by the use of digital image correlation coupled with ultrahigh-speed photography. Our measurements reveal dramatic friction variations, with the gouge layer initially displaying strengthening behavior and inhibiting earthquake rupture propagation. However, the gouge layer later features dramatic frictional strength losses, and hosts rupture re-nucleation enabled by dynamic stressing and marked friction weakening at higher slip velocities. Our measurements of the weakening and strengthening behavior of friction in fine rock gouge illustrate the strong dependence of their rheology on slip velocity and related processes, including shear heating, localization/delocalization of shear, and dilation/compaction of the granular shear layer.
Abstract Many earthquakes propagate at sub‐Rayleigh speeds. Earthquakes propagating at supershear speeds, though less common, are by far more destructive. Hence, it is important to quantify the motion characteristics associated with both types of earthquake ruptures. Here we report on the spatiotemporal properties of dynamic ruptures measured in our laboratory experiments using the dynamic digital image correlation technique. Earthquakes are mimicked by the frictional rupture propagating along the interface of two Homalite plates. Digital images of the propagating ruptures are captured by an ultrahigh‐speed camera and processed with digital image correlation in order to produce sequences of evolving displacement and velocity maps. Our measurements reveal the full‐field structure of the velocity components, bridge the gap between previous spatially sparse velocimeter measurements available only at two to three locations, and enable us to quantify the attenuation patterns away from the interface.
Abstract. Substantial insight into earthquake source processes has resulted from considering frictional ruptures analogous to cohesive-zone shear cracks from fracture mechanics. This analogy holds for slip-weakening representations of fault friction that encapsulate the resistance to rupture propagation in the form of breakdown energy, analogous to fracture energy, prescribed in advance as if it were a material property of the fault interface. Here, we use numerical models of earthquake sequences with enhanced weakening due to thermal pressurization of pore fluids to show how accounting for thermo-hydro-mechanical processes during dynamic shear ruptures makes breakdown energy rupture-dependent. We find that local breakdown energy is neither a constant material property nor uniquely defined by the amount of slip attained during rupture, but depends on how that slip is achieved through the history of slip rate and dynamic stress changes during the rupture process. As a consequence, the frictional breakdown energy of the same location along the fault can vary significantly in different earthquake ruptures that pass through. These results suggest the need for re-examining the assumption of pre-determined frictional breakdown energy common in dynamic rupture modeling and for better understanding of the factors that control rupture dynamics in the presence of thermo-hydro-mechanical processes.
Abstract Repeating earthquake sequences have been actively investigated to clarify many aspects of earthquake physics. The two particularly well‐studied sequences, known as the Los Angeles and San Francisco repeaters, have several intriguing observations, including their long (for the seismic moment) recurrence times that would suggest stress drops of 300 MPa based on typical assumptions, near‐syncronized timing prior to 2004, and higher than typical inferred stress drops (of 25 to 65 MPa, up to 90 MPa locally), but not as high as the recurrence times suggest. Here we show that all these observations are self‐consistent, in the sense that they can be reproduced in a single fault model. The suitable models build on the standard rate‐and‐state fault models, with velocity‐weakening patches imbedded into a velocity‐strengthening region, by adding either enhanced dynamic weakening during seismic slip or elevated normal stress on the patches, or both, to allow for the higher stress drops. Such models are able to match the observed average properties of the San Francisco and Los Angeles repeaters, as well as the overall nontrivial scaling between the recurrence time and seismic moment exhibited by many repeating sequences as a whole, for reasonable parameter choices based on experiments and theoretical studies. These models are characterized by the occurrence of substantial and variable aseismic slip at the locations of the repeating sources, which explains their atypical relation between recurrence interval and seismic moment, induces variability in the repeating source properties as observed, and results in their neither slip‐ nor time‐predictable behavior.
