Fault friction under thermal pressurization during large seismic-slip: Numerical analyses and extension of the model of frictional slip

Abstract

Earthquake faults are the result of severe strain localization in rocks deep down in the earth’s crust. This localized deformation is controlled by the size of the microstructure and various Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical (THM) couplings, whose modeling is central for understanding earthquake nucleation and seismic energy release. We model this challenging system using the Cosserat theory and by considering large shear deformations during seismic slip. Our numerical results justify the rate and state friction law (Dieterich, 1992; Ruina, 1983a), which describes empirically the fault tribology. This shows the importance of the underlying physics of our model for fault friction. In our analyses traveling shear bands along the thickness of the fault are present, leading to oscillations in the fault’s frictional response. Existing numerical analyses presented in Rattez et al. (2018a, 2018b, 2018c) do not capture this behavior, which goes beyond the established models of uniform shear (Lachenbruch, 1980) and shear on a mathematical plane (Rice, 2006a). Recent experimental results, that insulate thermal pressurization from other weakening mechanisms (Badt et al., 2020), corroborate our numerical results. Our results motivate us to extend the classical model of thermal pressurization in Mase & Smith (1987) and Rice (2006b) to incorporate different strain localization modes, temperature and pore fluid pressure boundary conditions.In particular, we start our analysis by using the normalized coupled system of partial differential equations that include the THM couplings for the case of a Cosserat continuum. We then perform a bifurcation analysis, which indicates that traveling shear bands are possible inside the fault gouge. Next, we derive our non linear mesh independent numerical results accounting for the influence of large displacements by using and Adaptive Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) procedure. We introduce viscosity in our numerical analyses for the rate and state phenomenology to emerge. We corroborate our numerical results comparing them to similar laboratory experiments. Furthermore, we modify the Volterra integral equation of the classical model of thermal pressurization in Mase & Smith (1987) and Rice (2006b), which we solve by a semi analytical procedure, in order to capture the effect of isothermal drained boundary conditions and traveling shear bands. Our results reappraise and extend the established models of frictional weakening due to thermal pressurization during coseismic slip.