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The Role of Interstitial Impurities in the Frictional Instability of Seismic Fault Models

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Abstract

The presence of impurities between two surfaces may greatly affect their frictional properties. In this article, we investigate the role of the impurities by studying experimental and numerical models of geophysical interest. Both model and experiments are considered to be representative of the dynamics of an earthquake fault and both systems reliably produce salient traits of earthquake dynamics such as stick-slip intermittent dynamics and power-law event distributions. The impurities are granular particles enclosed in the fault, known as fault gouge. We consider the role of the granular particles in the statistics of the slip events, and in the production of acoustic emissions.

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted with financial support from FIRB grant RBFR081IUK and EU NEST/Pathfinder project TRIGS, Contract no. 043386.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, SPIN–CNR, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Massimo Pica Ciamarra

  2. Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, CNR, Rome, Italy

    Fergal Dalton & Alberto Petri

  3. Department of Information Engineering and CNISM, Second University of Naples, Aversa, Italy

    Lucilla de Arcangelis

  4. Department of Environmental Sciences and CNISM, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy

    C. Godano & Eugenio Lippiello

Authors
  1. Massimo Pica Ciamarra
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  2. Fergal Dalton
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  3. Lucilla de Arcangelis
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  4. C. Godano
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  5. Eugenio Lippiello
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  6. Alberto Petri
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Correspondence to Massimo Pica Ciamarra.

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Ciamarra, M.P., Dalton, F., de Arcangelis, L. et al. The Role of Interstitial Impurities in the Frictional Instability of Seismic Fault Models. Tribol Lett 48, 89–94 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-012-9954-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-012-9954-3

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