Earthquake fault zones exhibit hierarchical damage and granular structures with evolving geometrical and material properties. Understanding how repeated brittle deformation form the structures and how the structures affect subsequent earthquakes is a rich problem involving coupling of various processes that operate over broad space and time scales. The diverse state-of-the-art papers collected here show how insight can come from many fields including statistical physics, structural geology and rock mechanics at large scales; elasticity, friction and nonlinear continuum mechanics at intermediate scales; and fracture mechanics, granular mechanics and surface physics at small scales.

This volume will be useful to students and professional researchers from Earth Sciences, Material Sciences, Engineering, Physics and other disciplines, who are interested in the properties of natural fault zones and the processes that occur between and during earthquakes.

Presents state-of-the-art research on repeated brittle deformation in earthquake fault zones Discusses connections between responses of solids and granular materials to shear loading Combines insights from statistical physics, structural geology, rock mechanics, nonlinear continuum mechanics, friction, fracture mechanics, granular mechanics and surface physics at various scales

Inhalt
Introduction by Ben-Zion, Y. and C. G. Sammis.- Slip sequences in laboratory experiments resulting from inhomogeneous shear as analogs of earthquakes associated with a fault edge by Rubinstein, S. M., I. Barel, Z. Reches, O. M. Braun; M. Urbakh and J. Fineberg.- Singular elasto-static field near a fault kink by Arias, R., R. Madariaga, and M. Adda-Bedia.- The Micromechanics of Brittle Solids in Triaxial Compression by Bhat, H. S., C. G Sammis and A. J Rosakis.- The elastic strain energy of damaged solids with applications to nonlinear deformation of crystalline rocks by Hamiel, Y., V. Lyakhovsky and Y. Ben-Zion.- Slow Dynamics of Earth Materials: An Experimental Overview by Ten Cate, J. A..- A unifying phase diagram for the dynamics of sheared solids and granular materials by Ben-Zion, Y., Dahmen, K. A. and J. T. Uhl.- Granular controls on periodicity of stick-slip events: kinematics and force-chains in an experimental fault by Hayman, N. W., L. Ducloue; K. L. Foco and K. E. Daniels.-Stick-Slip and the transition to Sliding in a 2D Granular Medium and a Fixed Particle Lattice by Krim, J., P. Yu, and R. P. Behringer.- Breaking up: comminution mechanisms in sheared fault gouge by Mair, K. and S. Abe.- The Mechanical Coupling of Fluid-Filled Granular Material Under Shear by Goren, L., E. Aharonov, D. Sparks and R. Toussaint.- The Role of Adsorbed Water on the Friction of a Layer of Submicron Particles by Sammis, C. G., D. A. Lockner and Z. Reches.- Effect of surface morphology on the dissipation during shear and slip along a rock-rock interface that contains a visco-elastic core by Angheluta, L., T. Candela; J. Mathiesen and F. Renard.- Surface roughness of ancient seismic faults: a combined LIDAR and high-resolution photogrammetric analysis of fault trace profiles by Bistacchi, A., W. Ashley Griffith, S. A. Smith, G. Di Toro, R. R. Jones and S. Nielsen.- Principal Slip Zones in Limestone: Microstructural Characterization and Implications for the Seismic Cycle (Tre Monti fault, central Apennines, Italy) by Smith, S. A. F., A. Billi, G. Di Toro and R. Spiess.- Earthquake Rupture at Focal Depth: Part I. Structure of the Pretorius Fault, TauTona Mine, South Africa by Heesakkers, V., S. K. Murphy, D. A. Lockner and Z. Reches.- Earthquake Rupture at Focal Depth: Part II. The 2004 M2.2 earthquake along the Pretorius fault by Heesakkers, V., S. K. Murphy and Z. Reches.