https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202124911006
Shear bands in dense fault gouge
1
Univ Lyon, INSA-Lyon, CNRS UMR5259, LaMCoS, 69621, France.
2
Univ. Lyon, INSA-Lyon, GEOMAS, EA7495, 69621, France.
* Corresponding author: nathalie.casas@insa-lyon.fr
Published online: 7 June 2021
Earthquakes happen with frictional sliding, by releasing all the stresses accumulated in the prestressed surrounding medium. The geological fault gouge, coming from the wear of previous slips, acts on friction stability and plays a key role in this sudden energy release. A large part of slip mechanisms are influenced, if not controlled, by the characteristics and environment of this tribological “third body”. A 2D granular fault (mm scale) is implemented with Discrete Element Modelling (DEM). A displacement-driven model with dry contact is studied to observe kinematics and properties of the slipping zone. Increasing the length of the granular media increases the slip needed to weaken the friction from friction peak to steadystate. Low-angle Riedel shear bands are mostly observed. Their number increases with the inter-particle friction coefficient, which also influences shear bands formation in their orientation angle (higher friction leads to higher angle with the main slip direction).
A video is available at https://doi.org/10.48448/nm1s-hw69
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
