Abstract

Earthquakes happen with frictional sliding, by releasing all the stresses accumulated in the pre-stressed surrounding medium. The geological fault gouge, coming from the wear of previous slips, acts on friction stability and plays a key role in this sudden energy release. A large part of slip mechanisms is influenced, if not controlled, by the characteristics and environment of this tribological “third body”. A 2D granular fault (mm scale) is implemented with Discrete Element Modelling (DEM). A displacement-driven model with dry contact is studied to observe kinematics and properties of the slipping zone. Changing the percentage of infill material (as matrix particles) within the granular media modifies the kinematic of the gouge and Riedel shears evolution. Low-angle Riedel shear bands are mostly observed. Their number increases with the inter-particle friction coefficient (which also influences shear bands formation in their orientation angle) and reduces with an increase in shear modulus.

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