Rate- and State-Dependent Friction Law and Statistical Properties of Earthquakes

TL;DR

This paper uses numerical simulations of a spring-block model with rate- and state-dependent friction to explore how earthquake statistics depend on the underlying physical laws, revealing characteristic features in earthquake distributions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how the statistical properties of earthquakes are influenced by the rate- and state-dependent friction law in a one-dimensional model.

Findings

Earthquake magnitude distribution shows a continuous spectrum with characteristic features.

Recurrence-time distribution varies with model parameters.

Model reproduces observed seismic statistical properties.

Abstract

In order to clarify how the statistical properties of earthquakes depend on the constitutive law characterizing the stick-slip dynamics, we make an extensive numerical simulation of the one-dimensional spring-block model with the rate- and state-dependent friction law. Both the magnitude distribution and the recurrence-time distribution are studied with varying the constitutive parameters characterizing the model. While a continuous spectrum of seismic events from smaller to larger magnitudes is obtained, earthquakes described by this model turn out to possess pronounced ``characteristic'' features.