Simulation of the Burridge-Knopoff Model of Earthquakes with Variable Range Stress Transfer

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Burridge-Knopoff earthquake model with variable-range stress transfer, revealing that long-range interactions lead to qualitatively different behaviors than traditional models, impacting earthquake understanding.

Contribution

It introduces the Burridge-Knopoff model with long-range stress transfer and analyzes its distinct behavior compared to cellular automaton models and nearest neighbor versions.

Findings

Long-range stress transfer causes different earthquake dynamics.

Behavior varies with the nature of velocity-weakening friction.

Implications for earthquake modeling and other driven systems.

Abstract

Simple models of earthquake faults are important for understanding the mechanisms for their observed behavior, such as Gutenberg-Richter scaling and the relation between large and small events, which is the basis for various forecasting methods. Although cellular automaton models have been studied extensively in the long-range stress transfer limit, this limit has not been studied for the Burridge-Knopoff model, which includes more realistic friction forces and inertia. We find that the latter model with long-range stress transfer exhibits qualitatively different behavior than both the long-range cellular automaton models and the usual Burridge-Knopoff model with nearest neighbor springs, depending on the nature of the velocity-weakening friction force. This result has important implications for our understanding of earthquakes and other driven dissipative systems.