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Fracture Energy and Breakdown Work During Earthquakes

Cocco, Massimo; Aretusini, Stefano; Cornelio, Chiara; Nielsen, Stefan B.; Spagnuolo, Elena; Tinti, Elisa; Di Toro, Giulio

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Authors

Massimo Cocco

Stefano Aretusini

Chiara Cornelio

Elena Spagnuolo

Elisa Tinti

Giulio Di Toro



Abstract

Large seismogenic faults consist of approximately meter-thick fault cores surrounded by hundreds-of-meters-thick damage zones. Earthquakes are generated by rupture propagation and slip within fault cores and dissipate the stored elastic strain energy in fracture and frictional processes in the fault zone and in radiated seismic waves. Understanding this energy partitioning is fundamental in earthquake mechanics to explain fault dynamic weakening and causative rupture processes operating over different spatial and temporal scales. The energy dissipated in the earthquake rupture propagation along a fault is called fracture energy or breakdown work. Here we review fracture energy estimates from seismological, modeling, geological, and experimental studies and show that fracture energy scales with fault slip. We conclude that although material-dependent constant fracture energies are important at the microscale for fracturing grains of the fault zone, they are negligible with respect to the macroscale processes governing rupture propagation on natural faults. ▪ Earthquake ruptures propagate on geological faults and dissipate energy in fracture and frictional processes from micro- (less than a millimeter) to macroscale (centimeters to kilometers). ▪ The energy dissipated in earthquake rupture propagation is called fracture energy (G) or breakdown work (Wb) and scales with coseismic slip. ▪ For earthquake ruptures in natural faults, the estimates of G and Wb are consistent with a macroscale description of causative processes. ▪ The energy budget of an earthquake remains controversial, and contributions from different disciplines are required to unravel this issue.

Citation

Cocco, M., Aretusini, S., Cornelio, C., Nielsen, S. B., Spagnuolo, E., Tinti, E., & Di Toro, G. (2023). Fracture Energy and Breakdown Work During Earthquakes. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 51(1), 217-252. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-071822-100304

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date May 31, 2023
Publication Date 2023
Deposit Date Jun 19, 2023
Publicly Available Date Jun 19, 2023
Journal Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Print ISSN 0084-6597
Electronic ISSN 1545-4495
Publisher Annual Reviews
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 51
Issue 1
Pages 217-252
DOI https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-071822-100304
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1171353

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2023 by the author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information





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