[1] Low-velocity fault zones (LVFZs) are found in most mature faults. They are usually 100–400 m wide and have 20%–60% wave velocity reductions relative to the country rock. To study the effect of LVFZs on earthquake rupture and the radiated wavefield, we conducted two-dimensional (2-D) simulations of dynamic rupture on faults that bisect a LVFZ, considering a range of velocity reductions and w...

[1] We introduce a novel scheme, DGCrack, to simulate dynamic rupture of earthquakes in three dimensions based on an hp-adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method. We solve the velocity-stress weak formulation of elastodynamic equations on an unstructured tetrahedral mesh with arbitrary mesh refinements (h-adaptivity) and local approximation orders (p-adaptivity). Our scheme considers second-order ...

The manner in which an earthquake rupture propagates across a fault reflects both the initial properties of the fault and the dynamical stresses produced by the rupture. We quantify the propagation of an earthquake rupture using the second moments of the earthquake space–time distribution. In particular, the second moments provide a simple way to differentiate between approximately bilateral an...

Observations after earthquakes where surface fault ruptures crossed engineering facilities reveal that some structures survived the rupture almost unscathed. In some cases, the rupture path appears to divert, “avoiding” the structure. Such observations point to an interaction between the propagating rupture, the soil, and the foundation. This paper i develops a two-step nonlinear finite-element...

Computer simulation of the strong ground motion generated from the earthquake•rupture process on a shallow strike-slip fault are carried out by using a 3-D finite difference method. The faulting process is modeled using a dynamic crack model with fixed rupture velocity or with finite-stress-fracture criterion. The near-source ground motion is sensitive to the details of sliprate or slip-acceler...

We modeled the source rupture process of the 20 September 1999 ChiChi, Taiwan, earthquake (Mw 7.6) using an integrated dataset of near-field strong ground motion and Global Positioning System observations. This large inland thrust earthquake produced a surface break more than 80 km long along the Chelungpu fault. The event triggered over 700 strong-motion instruments on the island of Taiwan. Th...

The 28 June 1992 Big Bear earthquake occurred at 15:05:21 GMT and is considered to be an af tershock of the earlier Mw = 7.3 Landers earthquake. F rom overall aftershock locations and long-period focal studies, rupture is general ly assumed to have propagated northeast. No surface rupture was found, however , and the mainshock locations determined f rom both strong motion and TERRAscope data ar...

[1] We have developed a systematic nonlinear inversion method for estimating rupture propagation and the underlying dynamic parameters for large historical earthquakes. The rupture modeling is carried out using a three-dimensional finite-difference method, and the inversion is implemented by a neighbourhood algorithm, minimizing the misfit between computed and observed near-fault seismograms. W...

We simulate dynamic ruptures on a strike-slip fault in homogeneous and layered half-spaces and on a thrust fault in a layered half-space. With traditional friction models, sliding friction exceeds 50% of the fault normal compressive stress, and unless the pore pressures approach the lithostatic stress, the rupture characteristics depend strongly on the depth, and sliding generates large amounts...