Yumi Urata, Keiko Kuge, Yuko Kase, Suppression of slip and rupture velocity increased by thermal pressurization: Effect of dilatancy J. Geophys. Res., 118, 5827-5837, 2013.

We investigated the effect of dilatancy on dynamic rupture propagation on a fault where thermal pressurization (TP) is in effect, taking into account permeability varying with porosity; the study is based on three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations of spontaneous ruptures obeying a slip-weakening friction law and Coulomb failure criterion. The effects of dilatancy on dynamic ruptures interacting with TP have been often investigated in one- or two-dimensional numerical simulations. The sole 3D numerical simulation gave attention only to the behavior at a single point on a fault. Moreover, with the sole exception based on a single-degree-freedom spring-slider model, the previous simulations including dilatancy and TP have not considered changes in hydraulic diffusivity. However, the hydraulic diffusivity, which strongly affects TP, can vary as a power of porosity. In this study, we apply a power law relationship between permeability and porosity. We consider both reversible and irreversible changes in porosity, assuming that the irreversible change is proportional to the slip rate and dilatancy coefficient epsilon. Our numerical simulations suggest that the effects of dilatancy can suppress slip and rupture velocity increased by TP. The results reveal that the amount of slip on the fault decreases with increasing or exponent of the power law, and the rupture velocity is predominantly suppressed by epsilon. This was observed regardless of whether the applied stresses were high or low. The deficit of the final slip in relation to epsilon can be smaller as the fault size is larger.