Spontaneous rupture on irregular faults

Abstract:

It is now know (e.g. Robinson et al., 2006) that when ruptures propagate around bends, the rupture velocity decrease. In the extreme case, a large bend in the fault can stop the rupture. We develop a 2-D finite difference method to simulate spontaneous dynamic rupture on irregular faults. This method is based on a second order leap-frog finite difference scheme on a uniform mesh of triangles. A relaxation method is used to generate an irregular fault geometry-conforming mesh from the uniform mesh. Through this numerical coordinate mapping, the elastic wave equations are transformed and solved in a curvilinear coordinate system. Extensive numerical experiments using the linear slip-weakening law will be shown to demonstrate the effect of fault geometry on rupture properties. A long term goal is to simulate the strong ground motion near the vicinity of bends, jogs, etc.