Abstract
A fault is treated as an array of asperities with a prescribed statistical distribution of strengths. When an asperity fails, the stress on the failed asperity is transferred to one or more adjacent asperities. For a linear array the stress is transferred to a single adjacent asperity and for a two-dimensional array to three adjacent asperities. Using a renormalization group (RG) method, the properties of a scale invariant hierarchical model are investigated for the stochastic growth of fault breaks through induced failure by stress transfer. An extrapolation to arbitrarily large scales shows the existence of a critical applied stress at which the solutions bifurcate. At stresses less than the critical stress, virtually no asperities fail on a large scale, and the fault is locked. Above the critical stress, asperity failure cascades away from the nucleus of failure; this catastrophic failure is interpreted as an earthquake and it corresponds to the transition from stick to slip behavior on the fault.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1894-1900 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Journal of Geophysical Research |
Volume | 90 |
Issue number | B2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1985 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geophysics
- Forestry
- Oceanography
- Aquatic Science
- Ecology
- Water Science and Technology
- Soil Science
- Geochemistry and Petrology
- Earth-Surface Processes
- Atmospheric Science
- Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Space and Planetary Science
- Palaeontology