Unconventional singularities and energy balance in frictional rupture

Efim A. Brener and Eran Bouchbinder ()
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Efim A. Brener: Forschungszentrum Jülich
Eran Bouchbinder: Weizmann Institute of Science

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract A widespread framework for understanding frictional rupture, such as earthquakes along geological faults, invokes an analogy to ordinary cracks. A distinct feature of ordinary cracks is that their near edge fields are characterized by a square root singularity, which is intimately related to the existence of strict dissipation-related lengthscale separation and edge-localized energy balance. Yet, the interrelations between the singularity order, lengthscale separation and edge-localized energy balance in frictional rupture are not fully understood, even in physical situations in which the conventional square root singularity remains approximately valid. Here we develop a macroscopic theory that shows that the generic rate-dependent nature of friction leads to deviations from the conventional singularity, and that even if this deviation is small, significant non-edge-localized rupture-related dissipation emerges. The physical origin of the latter, which is predicted to vanish identically in the crack analogy, is the breakdown of scale separation that leads an accumulated spatially-extended dissipation, involving macroscopic scales. The non-edge-localized rupture-related dissipation is also predicted to be position dependent. The theoretical predictions are quantitatively supported by available numerical results, and their possible implications for earthquake physics are discussed.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22806-9

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