Time-domain Green’s function in poroelastic mediums and its application to 3-D spontaneous rupture simulation

Abstract

SUMMARY Plenty of studies have suggested that pore fluid may play an important role in earthquake rupture processes. Establishing numerical models can provide great insight into how pore fluid may affect earthquake rupture processes. However, numerical simulation of 3-D spontaneous ruptures in poroelastic mediums is still a challenging task. In this paper, it is found that a closed-form time-domain Green’s function of Biot’s poroelastodynamic model can be constructed when the source frequency and source-field distance are within a certain range. The time-domain Green’s function is validated by being transformed into the frequency domain and comparing with the frequency-domain Green’s functions obtained by former papers. Poroelastic wave propagation phase diagrams for various two-phase poroelastic mediums are then plotted to show the applicable range of frequency and source-field distance for the new time-domain Green’s function. It is shown that the applicable range not only include the frequency and spatial range of concern in seismology but also overlap that in acoustics. Based on the time-domain Green’s function, the boundary integral equations (BIEs) for modelling dynamic ruptures in elastic mediums are extended to fluid-saturated mediums. In the meantime, a functional relationship between the effective stress tensor and the total stress tensor in fluid-saturated mediums is also obtained, which allows us to directly obtain the effective stress by BIEs. The spontaneous rupture processes controlled by the slip-weakening friction law on faults in elastic mediums and in fluid-saturated mediums are compared. It is found that under the same conditions, fluid-saturated rocks are more prone to supershear rupture than dry rocks. This result suggests that pore fluid may promote the excitation of supershear rupture. The poroelastic wave propagation phase diagrams also suggest that simulating a coseismic phase in the real scale requires a certain sample length in laboratories. They also suggest that an undrained governing equation is suitable for seismic wave propagation simulation in poroelastic media.