Intersonic shear rupture mechanism

Intersonic shear cracks and fault ruptures

Recent experimental observations of intersonic shear rupture events that occur in a variety of material systems have rekindled interest in the intersonic failure phenomenon. Since the early 1990s, engineers and scientists working in all length scales, from the atomistic, the structural, all the way up to the scale of the earth’s deformation processes, have undertaken joint e€orts to study this ...

Fan-structure shear rupture mechanism as a source of shear rupture rockbursts

It has been observed in field and laboratory conditions that failure of intact hard rocks at highly confined compression can be accompanied by abnormal violence. Under both of these conditions the failure process is associated with shear rupture development. David Ortlepp, who acquired more than 40 years of experience in the study of shear rupture rockbursts in deep and ultra-deep South African...

Influence of the rupture initiation on the intersonic transition: Crack-like versus pulse-like modes

Three-dimensional modeling of intersonic shear-crack growth in asymmetrically loaded unidirectional composite plates

An anisotropic cohesive model of fracture is applied to the numerical simulation of Coker and Rosakis experiments (2001). In these experiments, a unidirectional graphite–epoxy composites plate was impacted with a projectile, resulting in an intersonic shear-dominated crack growth. The simulations account for explicit crack nucleation––through a selfadaptive remeshing procedure––crack closure an...

Shear strain localization in elastodynamic rupture simulations

We study strain localization as an enhanced velocity weakening mechanism on earthquake faults. Fault friction is modeled using Shear Transformation Zone (STZ) Theory, a microscopic physical model for non-affine rearrangements in granular fault gouge. STZ Theory is implemented in spring slider and dynamic rupture models of faults. We compare dynamic shear localization to deformation that is unif...