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Frictional resistance of faults during accelerating and decelerating earthquake slip

Abstract

The dynamic friction of faults during earthquake slip is a critical control on earthquake ruptures in the crust. Extrapolation of brittle crack theories to natural earthquakes1,2,3 has led to the commonly held view that fault friction reduces during rapid earthquake slip, a process known as slip-weakening1. High-velocity gouge experiments4,5 and recent analyses of thermal pressurization6,7 and frictional melting8 support such a notion; however, these studies dealt with constant rates of slip along faults. Here we present the results of experiments aimed at understanding the frictional behaviour of fault zone materials under variable slip rates—conditions that are more representative of natural earthquakes. Our results show that faults undergo a sequence of strengthening, weakening and healing during acceleration and deceleration of slip. Such a sequence may be explained by the extrapolation of rate-and-state frictional behaviour9,10 at low slip velocities to more realistic slip rates, but involving different physical mechanisms and a different scale. The initial strengthening should impose a barrier for rupture growth into large earthquakes. The healing on decelerating fault motion may lead to pulse-like earthquake ruptures11,12,13,14 and static stress drops that are low in comparison with the dynamic stress changes15.

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Figure 1: Configuration of the simulated fault.
Figure 2: Results from constant-velocity experiments.
Figure 3: Results from changing-velocity experiments.
Figure 4: Comparison between experimental data, friction modelled by equation (3) and friction modelled by the rate-and-state friction law.

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H.S. carried out the experiments and analyses. H.S. and T.S. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Hiroki Sone.

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Sone, H., Shimamoto, T. Frictional resistance of faults during accelerating and decelerating earthquake slip. Nature Geosci 2, 705–708 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo637

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