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Earthquake science

Faults greased at high speed

Nature volume 427, pages 405–406 (2004)Cite this article

The dynamics of the tectonic faults that produce earthquakes remain puzzling. An inference from laboratory experiments could help: at high rates of slip, friction at the interface may fall dramatically.

For several decades now, geophysicists have been trying to understand why the energy budget for tectonic faulting does not seem to add up. The problem is that faults appear to be more slippery — less constrained by friction — than has been predicted by laboratory and theoretical work. The measurements of rock friction, described on page 436 of this issue by Di Toro and colleagues1, may put things on firmer ground. They show that friction of quartz-rich rock is indeed high at low slip rates, consistent with previous studies, but that under certain conditions it drops dramatically as slip velocity approaches a few millimetres per second.

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  1. Chris Marone is in the Department of Geosciences, 536 Deike Building, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802, USA

    Chris Marone

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  1. Chris Marone
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Marone, C. Faults greased at high speed. Nature 427, 405–406 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/427405a

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