Earthquake friction

Laboratory friction slip experiments on rocks provide firm evidence that the static friction coefficient μ has values ∼0.7. This would imply large amounts of heat produced by seismically active faults, but no heat flow anomaly is observed, and mineralogic evidence of frictional heating is virtually absent. This stands for lower μ values ∼0.2, as also required by the observed orientation of faults with respect to the maximum compressive stress. We show that accounting for the thermal and mechanical energy balance of the system removes this inconsistence, implying a multi-stage strain release process. The first stage consists of a small and slow aseismic slip at high friction on pre-existent stress concentrators within the fault volume but angled with the main fault as Riedel cracks. This introduces a second stage dominated by frictional temperature increase inducing local pressurization of pore fluids around the slip patches, which is in turn followed by a third stage in which thermal diffusion extends the frictionally heated zones making them coalesce into a connected pressurized region oriented as the fault plane. Then, the system enters a state of equivalent low static friction in which it can undergo the fast elastic radiation slip prescribed by dislocation earthquake models.