Fault rheology beyond frictional melting

Abstract

During earthquakes, comminution and frictional heating both contribute to the dissipation of stored energy. With sufficient dissipative heating, melting processes can ensue, yielding the production of frictional melts or "pseudotachylytes." It is commonly assumed that the Newtonian viscosities of such melts control subsequent fault slip resistance. Rock melts, however, are viscoelastic bodies, and, at high strain rates, they exhibit evidence of a glass transition. Here, we present the results of high-velocity friction experiments on a well-characterized melt that demonstrate how slip in melt-bearing faults can be governed by brittle fragmentation phenomena encountered at the glass transition. Slip analysis using models that incorporate viscoelastic responses indicates that even in the presence of melt, slip persists in the solid state until sufficient heat is generated to reduce the viscosity and allow remobilization in the liquid state. Where a rock is present next to the melt, we note that wear of the crystalline wall rock by liquid fragmentation and agglutination also contributes to the brittle component of these experimentally generated pseudotachylytes. We conclude that in the case of pseudotachylyte generation during an earthquake, slip even beyond the onset of frictional melting is not controlled merely by viscosity but rather by an interplay of viscoelastic forces around the glass transition, which involves a response in the brittle/solid regime of these rock melts. We warn of the inadequacy of simple Newtonian viscous analyses and call for the application of more realistic rheological interpretation of pseudotachylyte-bearing fault systems in the evaluation and prediction of their slip dynamics.