Short-lived Supershear Rupture

Abstract:

Fukuyama and Olsen (2002) computed the supershear rupture initiation, propagation and termination process due to a passage of high stress drop area (called asperity) using a boundary integral equation method. They found that supershear rupture continued to propagate after the passage through high stress drop area but it died after a certain propagation distance, which depends on the elastic energy released at the high stress drop area. Here, we could reproduce a similar phenomenon in the laboratory. We conducted large-scale biaxial friction experiments using a pair of meter-scaled metagabbro rock specimens (V_P=6.9km/s, V_S=3.6km/s) at the National Research institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED). We observed several stick slip rupture events that initiated close to an asperity and immediately became supershear ruptures. But after propagating certain distance they died out and co-existing subshear ruptures became prominent. If we look into details, during the supershear rupture, we could see a sequence of rupture acceleration, its short rest and re-acceleration. This feature reminds us of a sequential breakage of small high stress patches as predicted by Fukuyama and Madariaga (2000). These observations might be interpreted under a concept of energy balance where the energy transmission from strain energy released by the asperity to fracture energy consumed at the crack tip was not instantaneously balanced in space. This could be related to the fact that earthquake rupture velocity is rather smooth reported from the finite fault analysis of large earthquakes with seismic waveforms.

References

Fukuyama, E. and R. Madariaga (2000) Dynamic propagation and interaction of a rupture front on a planar fault, PAGEOPH, 257, 1959-1979.

Fukuyama, E. and K.B. Olsen (2002) A condition for super-shear rupture propagation in a heterogeneous stress field, PAGEOPH, 159, 2047-2056.