Internal structures and high-velocity frictional properties of Longmenshan fault zone at Shenxigou activated during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake

摘要

Abstract This paper reports internal structures of a wide fault zone at Shenxigou, Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, China, and high-velocity frictional properties of the fault gouge collected near the coseismic slip zone during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Vertical offset and horizontal displacement at the trench site were 2.8?m (NW side up) and 4.8?m (right-lateral), respectively. The fault zone formed in Triassic sandstone, siltstone, and shale about 500?m away from the Yingxiu-Beichuan fault, a major fault in the Longmenshan fault system. A trench survey across the coseismic fault, and observations of outcrops and drill cores down to a depth of 57?m revealed that the fault zone consists of fault gouge and fault breccia of about 0.5 and 250–300?m in widths, respectively, and that the fault strikes N62°E and dips 68° to NW. Quaternary conglomerates were recovered beneath the fault in the drilling, so that the fault moved at least 55?m along the coseismic slip zone, experiencing about 18 events of similar sizes. The fault core is composed of grayish gouge (GG) and blackish gouge (BG) with very complex slip-zone structures. BG contains low-crystalline graphite of about 30?%. High-velocity friction experiments were conducted at normal stresses of 0.6–2.1?MPa and slip rates of 0.1–2.1?m/s. Both GG and BG exhibit dramatic slip weakening at constant high slip rates that can be described as an exponential decay from peak friction coefficient μ ~(p) to steady-state friction coefficient μ ~(ss) over a slip-weakening distance D ~(c). Deformation of GG and BG is characterized by overlapped slip-zone structures and development of sharp slickenside surfaces, respectively. Comparison of our data with those reported for other outcrops indicates that the high-velocity frictional properties of the Longmenshan fault zones are quite uniform and the high-velocity weakening must have promoted dynamic rupture propagation during the Wenchuan earthquake.