Affiliation:
1. University of California, Santa Cruz Santa Cruz CA USA
2. Department of Physics & Astronomy University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia PA USA
3. Department of Mechanical and Civil Engineering California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA USA
4. The Racah Institute of Physics Hebrew University Jerusalem Israel
Abstract
AbstractSeismic moment and rupture length can be combined to infer stress drop, a key parameter for assessing earthquakes. In natural earthquakes, stress drops are largely depth‐independent, which is surprising given the expected dependence of frictional stress on normal stresses and hence overburden. We have developed a transparent experimental fault that allows direct observation of thousands of slip events, with ruptures that are fully contained within the fault. Surprisingly, the observed stress drops are largely independent of both the magnitude of normal stress and its heterogeneity, capturing the independence seen in nature. However, we observe larger, normal stress‐dependent stress drops when the fault area is reduced, which allows slip events to frequently reach the edge of the interface. We conclude that confined ruptures have normal stress independent stress drops, and thus the depth‐independent stress drops of tectonic earthquakes may be a consequence of their confined nature.
Funder
National Science Foundation
U.S. Department of Energy
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Subject
General Earth and Planetary Sciences,Geophysics
Cited by
1 articles.
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