Effects of Fluid Flow on Slip Evolution in a Thermoporoelastic Medium: Implications for Seismic Moment Evolution

Abstract:

We have constructed a framework associated with the interaction among heat, fluid pressure and inelastic pore creation, and found three nondimensional parameters, S_u, S_u’ and T_a, which are related to the dilatancy effect, fluid flow effect and the upper limit of the dilatancy, respectively. Without fluid flow, they were found to generate two qualitatively different slip behaviors, acceleration case and spontaneous slip cessation case. In particular, the acceleration case shows the initial deceleration and later acceleration approaching the final high-speed slip. Between the deceleration and acceleration phases, we observe a transient state featured by low and approximately constant slip velocity. We employ the fluid flow effect here and give some implications for understanding the temporal evolution of seismic moments. For example, Ide et al. (2007) found that ordinary earthquakes and slow earthquakes have different forms of temporal evolutions of the seismic moments. In addition, Duputel et al. (2013) observed examples showing exceptional moment evolution behavior even among ordinary earthquakes. Yamashita and Suzuki (2011) successfully modeled the former result by introducing slip-induced dilatancy coupled with fluid flow, while the modeling of the latter remains unaccomplished.

If we introduce the fluid flow, we observe only the acceleration case and the duration of the transient state is longer than that without the fluid flow. This can be a model for a slow earthquake if we assume a 2-D model, and the seismic moment of such an earthquake evolves in almost a quadratic function in time. On the other hand, for the acceleration case without the fluid flow, the seismic moment evolution is almost a cubic function. Moreover, for the spontaneous slip cessation case, it evolves with a quadratic or linear function. The framework explaining all the behaviors mentioned above has been obtained. Quantitative investigation on the nondimensional parameters will also be done.