Experimental constraints on dynamic fragmentation as a dissipative process during seismic slip.

ABSTRACT: Various fault damage fabrics, from gouge in the principal slip zone to fragmented and pulverized rocks in the fault damage zone, have been attributed to brittle deformation at high strain rates during earthquake rupture. Past experimental work has shown that there exists a critical threshold in stress-strain rate space through which rock failure transitions from failure along a few discrete fracture planes to intense fragmentation. We present new experimental results on Arkansas Novaculite (AN) and Westerly Granite (WG) in which we quantify fracture surface area produced by dynamic fragmentation under uniaxial compressive loading and examine the controls of pre-existing mineral anisotropy on dissipative processes at the microscale. Tests on AN produced substantially greater new fracture su

SUBMITTER: Barber T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5580446 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature