SCEC Award Number 10197 View PDF
Proposal Category Collaborative Proposal (Integration and Theory)
Proposal Title Laboratory Experiments on Fault Shear Resistance Relevant to Coseismic Earthquake Slip
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
David L. Goldsby Brown University Terry E. Tullis Brown University
Other Participants Giulio Di Toro
SCEC Priorities A8, A11, B2 SCEC Groups FARM, SHRA, Geology
Report Due Date 02/28/2011 Date Report Submitted N/A
Project Abstract
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Intellectual Merit In order to determine where best to deploy limited resources for mitigating earthquake loss in the US, we need to understand when and where earthquakes may occur and how intense their accelerations can be. Toward that end, we benefit from improved understanding of the seismic source through laboratory measurements and modeling, to anticipate phenomena that may occur in future earthquakes. One of the great gaps in our understanding of source processes is how shear resistance varies on a fault during rapid coseismic slip and what this implies about the magnitudes of stress drops and near-fault accelerations. Our experiments, which explore the coseismic shear resistance of fault materials in high-speed friction experiments, are helping to fill that gap. More specifically, our experiments of the last year quantified the effects of ambient fault temperature on the onset of dynamic weakening due to flash heating of microscopic asperities on faults. Currently we are exploring the effect of distributed shearing of fault gouge and the influence of contact size on flash heating behavior, both critical issues with regard to the extrapolation of experiimental data and flash heating theory to natural faults.
Broader Impacts The data and knowledge gained from our experiments are incorporated in undergraduate and graduate coursework at Brown University. The experiments on flash heating of faults at elevated temperature were conducted with Francois Passelegue, a talented French graduate student (who is now headed for graduate work in Paris), and thereby improved international collaborations. Refinements of the sample assemblies and fixtures for the Instron apparatus are improving the infrastructure of the science and engineering facilities at Brown University. Information gained from this study improves society by contributing generally to scientific knowledge, as well as more concretely through improved knowledge of earthquake physics. These data have important implications for societal impacts of earthquakes, such as how strong ground motions and accelerations associated with earthquakes can be.
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