36 - Implications of crustal strain during conventional, slow, and silent earthquakes

Uniform block-slip motion consistent with simple shear on locked fault segments is the primary feature apparent in geodetic measurements of strain accumulation along plate boundaries (Savage, 1983). However, almost every aspect of fault failure is nonlinear in character. This premise derives from theoretical models (Kostrov, 1966; Richards, 1976; Andrews, 1976; Freund, 1979; Rice and Rudnicki, 1979; Rice, 1983, 1992; Stuart, 1979, Stuart and Mavko, 1979; Das and Scholz, 1981; Rundle et al., 1984; Tse and Rice, 1986; Lorenzetti and Tullis, 1989; Segall and Rice, 1995; Shaw, 1997; Miller et al., 1999) and laboratory-generated frictional failure of crustal materials (Dieterich, 1979, 1981; Mogi, 1981; Mogi et al., 1982) which predict accelerating deformation will occur before dynamic slip instabilities, better known as earthquakes.