Unconventional singularities and energy balance in frictional rupture
Open Access
- 10 May 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Communications
- Vol. 12 (1), 1-9
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22806-9
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.Keywords
Funding Information
- Israel Science Foundation (295/16, 1085/20)
- 1) The Ben May Center for Chemical Theory and Computation (2) The Harold Perlman Family.
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