Real earthquake faults are surrounded by fractured zones whose effect on earth-quake rupture is investigated. We first performed a series of dynamic photoe-lasticity experiments of a dynamic shear rupture along a frictional interface bounded on one side by an intact material and on the other side by a damaged material of the same or different undamaged elastic properties. We notice that on the side of the rupture where damage is in tension the bulk damage effects dominate over the local elastic effects leading to reduction in rupture velocity or in some cases complete termination while on the compressional side the local elastic effect seems to dominate. To numerically model the above experiments we developed a micro-mechanics based damage constitutive description with friction on the fault governed by complex rate and state like laws. Our numerical results agree well with the photoelastic experiments.
展开▼
