Publication Date:
2012-10-09
Description:
After nucleation, a large earthquake propagates as an expanding rupture front along a fault. This front activates countless fault patches that slip by consuming energy stored in Earth's crust. We simulated the slip of a fault patch by rapidly loading an experimental fault with energy stored in a spinning flywheel. The spontaneous evolution of strength, acceleration, and velocity indicates that our experiments are proxies of fault-patch behavior during earthquakes of moment magnitude (M(w)) = 4 to 8. We show that seismically determined earthquake parameters (e.g., displacement, velocity, magnitude, or fracture energy) can be used to estimate the intensity of the energy release during an earthquake. Our experiments further indicate that high acceleration imposed by the earthquake's rupture front quickens dynamic weakening by intense wear of the fault zone.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Chang, J C -- Lockner, D A -- Reches, Z -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Oct 5;338(6103):101-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1221195.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Geology and Geophysics, University of Oklahoma, 100 East Boyd Street, Norman, OK 73019, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23042892" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Acceleration
;
*Earthquakes
;
Laboratories
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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