Benchun Duan et al. "A suite of exercises for verifying dynamic earthquake rupture codes. " Seismological Research Letters 89, no. 3 (2018) We describe a set of benchmark exercises that are designed to test if computer codes that simulate dynamic earthquake rupture are working as intended. These types of computer codes are often used to understand how earthquakes operate, and they produce simulation results that include earthquake size, amounts of fault slip, and the patterns of ground shaking and crustal deformation. The benchmark exercises examine a range of features that scientists incorporate in their dynamic earthquake rupture simulations. These include implementations of simple or complex fault geometry, off-fault rock response to an earthquake, stress conditions, and a variety of formulations for fault friction. Many of the benchmarks were designed to investigate scientific problems at the forefronts of earthquake physics and strong ground motions research. The exercises are freely available on our website for use by the scientific community.

We present a high-resolution simulation of the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, including non-linear frictional failure on a megathrustsplay fault system. Our method exploits unstructured meshes capturing the complicated geometries in subduction zones that are crucial to understand large earthquakes and tsunami generation. These up-to-date largest and longest dynamic rupture simulations enable analysis of dynamic source effects on the seafloor displacements.To tackle the extreme size of this scenario an end-to-end optimization of the simulation code SeisSol was necessary. We implemented a new cache-aware wave propagation scheme and optimized the dynamic rupture kernels using code generation. We established a novel clustered local-time-stepping scheme for dynamic rupture. In total, we achieved a speed-up of 13.6 compared to the previous implementation. For the Sumatra scenario with 221 million elements this reduced the time-to-solution to 13.9 hours on 86,016 Haswell cores. Furthermore, we used asynchronous output to overlap I/O and compute time.

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The 1992 M w 7.3 Landers earthquake is perhaps one of the best studied seismic events.However, many aspects of the dynamics of the rupture process are still puzzling, for example, the rupture transfer between fault segments. We present 3-D spontaneous dynamic rupture simulations, incorporating the interplay of fault geometry, topography, 3-D rheology, off-fault plasticity, and viscoelastic attenuation. Our preferred scenario reproduces a broad range of observations, including final slip distribution, shallow slip deficits, and mapped off-fault deformation patterns. We demonstrate good agreement between synthetic and observed waveform characteristics and associated peak ground velocities. Despite very complex rupture evolution, ground motion variability is close to what is commonly assumed in Ground Motion Prediction Equations. We examine the effects of variations in modeling parameterization within a suite of scenarios including purely elastic setups and models neglecting viscoelastic attenuation. Source dynamics of all models include dynamic triggering over large distances and direct branching; rupture terminates spontaneously on most of the principal fault segments. Sustained dynamic rupture of all fault segments in general, and rupture transfers in particular, constrain amplitude and orientation of initial fault stresses and friction. We conclude that physically consistent in-scale earthquake rupture simulations can augment earthquake source observations toward improving the understanding of earthquake source physics of complex, segmented fault systems.

Taking the full complexity of subduction zones into account is important for realistic modeling and hazard assessment of subduction zone seismicity and associated tsunamis. Studying seismicity requires numerical methods that span a large range of spatial and temporal scales. We present the first coupled framework that resolves subduction dynamics over millions of years and earthquake dynamics down to fractions of a second. Using a two-dimensional geodynamic seismic cycle (SC) model, we model 4 million years of subduction followed by cycles of spontaneous megathrust events. At the initiation of one such SC event, we export the self-consistent fault and surface geometry, fault stress and strength, and heterogeneous material properties to a dynamic rupture (DR) model. Coupling leads to spontaneous dynamic rupture nucleation, propagation, and arrest with the same spatial characteristics as in the SC model. It also results in a similar material-dependent stress drop, although dynamic slip is significantly larger. The DR event shows a high degree of complexity, featuring various rupture styles and speeds, precursory phases, and fault reactivation. Compared to a coupled model with homogeneous material properties, accounting for realistic lithological contrasts doubles the amount of maximum slip, introduces local pulse-like rupture episodes, and relocates the peak slip from near the downdip limit of the seismogenic zone to the updip limit. When an SC splay fault is included in the DR model, the rupture prefers the splay over the shallow megathrust, although wave reflections do activate the megathrust afterward.