A new light on arresting mechanism of dynamic earthquake faulting

Abstract

Classic analyses have shown that dynamic growth of a shear crack cannot be arrested in a uniformly stressed elastic medium with homogeneously distributed fracture strengths. This leads to a general supposition that earthquake rupture growth is arrested by inhomogeneities in the distributions of strengths or stresses. We propose a novel idea for arresting mechanism of dynamic crack growth in the simulation with no constraints on the crack geometry. Our analysis shows that the arresting occurs spontaneously soon after crack bending even in the homogeneous medium and that inhomogeneities are indispensable not for stopping crack growth, but for its promotion.