Law and Order for Friction and Faults: One Law to Rule Them All – GWC Mag

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: AGU Advances

Geologists have long appreciated that how different rocks deform depends on their general material properties. However, actual rock deformation and specific fault behavior emerge from the fine-scale properties of highly complex fault-zone materials that behave differently under different conditions of such factors as composition, strain rate, and temperature. Being able to predict specifically how faults behave is crucial to advancing our understanding of both geodynamics as well as seismic hazards.

Barbot [2023] presents a quantitative model that can predict frictional rock deformation across a wide range of conditions. These conditions span very different behaviors, such as healing and deformation that can lead variously to either strengthening or weakening. Use of this single model should, with additional calibrations, enable better modeling of fault behavior, deformation, and seismicity across the lithosphere.

Citation: Barbot, S. (2023). Constitutive behavior of rocks during the seismic cycle. AGU Advances, 4, e2023AV000972. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023AV000972

—Peter Zeitler, Editor, AGU Advances

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