Abstract
AbstractMany natural fault surfaces exhibit remarkably similar scale‐dependent roughness, which may reflect the scale‐dependent yield strength of rocks. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM), we show that a sample of the Corona Heights Fault exhibits isotropic surface roughness well‐described by a power law, with a Hurst exponent of 0.75 +/− 0.05 at all wavelengths from 60 nm to 10 μm. The roughness data and a recently proposed theoretical framework predict that yield strength varies with length scale as λ‐0.25+/−0.05. Nanoindentation tests on the Corona Heights sample and another fault sample whose topography was previously measured with AFM (the Yair Fault) reveal a scale‐dependent yield stress with power‐law exponents of −0.12 +/− 0.06 and −0.18 +/− 0.08, respectively. These values are within one to two standard deviations of the predicted value, and provide experimental evidence that fault roughness is controlled by intrinsic material properties, which produces a characteristic surface geometry.
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