0000000000454833
AUTHOR
Alison Ord
A smeared seismicity constitutive model
The classical application of rate and state dependent frictional constitutive laws has involved the instabilities developed between two sliding surfaces. In such a situation, the behaviour and evolution of asperities is the controlling mechanism of velocity weakening. However, most faults have a substantial thickness and it would appear that it is the bulk behaviour of the fault gouge, at whatever scale, that is important. The purpose of this paper is to explore how bulk frictional sliding behaviour may be described. We explore here the consequences of applying the rate and state framework initially developed to describe the frictional behaviour at the interface between two interacting slid…
Fluid reservoirs in the crust and mechanical coupling between the upper and lower crust
An important observation associated with seismic activity on the Nagamachi-Rifu Fault is the existence of tabular, fluid rich zones at mid-crustal levels. These zones resemble the “bright spots” seen in many seismic images of the crust worldwide. The aim of this paper is to develop the mechanical foundations for the formation of such zones. To do so requires an understanding of the distribution of pore fluid pressure in a deforming crust. In a hydrostatically stressed porous material, the pore fluid pressure should equal the mean stress in order to keep the pores from collapsing. Past discussions of this subject imply very high pore fluid pressures, two to three times lithostatic. Considera…
On the thermodynamics of listric faults
We investigate a novel fully coupled thermal-mechanical numerical model of the crust in order to trace the physics of interaction of its brittle and ductile layers. In a unified approach these layers develop in a natural transition as a function of the state variables pressure, deviatoric stress, temperature and strain-rate. We find that the main storage of elastic energy lies in the domain where brittle and ductile strain-rates overlap so that shear zones are attracted to this zone of maximum energy dissipation. This dissipation appears as a local heat source (shear heating). The brittle-ductile transition zone evolves through extreme weakening by thermo-mechanical feedback. The physics of…