The study of stick-slip in granular fault gouge is important since slips observed in laboratory or numerical studies are understood to mimic earthquakes, allowing to better understand the governing mechanisms of earthquake dynamics. Granular fault gouge is the central part of a fault, where intact rocks have been crushed to granular particles due to erosion and fragmentation. These faults may be dry or saturated with fluids. When the gouge is saturated with a fluid, fluid-particle interactions arise which may influence the size and occurrence rate of slip events. Therefore, we conduct 3D coupled CFD-DEM simulations modelling the frictional behavior of fluid-saturated granular fault gouge. We observe that fluids can extend the stick phase leading to an increase in slip event size. This observation is confirmed by statistical analysis on a large number of stick-slip events.
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