How Fault‐Normal and Shear‐Parallel Stiffness Influence Frictional Sliding Behavior

Abstract

The potential of faults to show earthquake‐generating slip instabilities depends not only on the intrinsic frictional properties of the fault zone, but also on the elasticity of the surrounding material. A velocity‐weakening fault is expected to show increasingly unstable frictional behavior with decreasing local elastic stiffness around the fault zone. Fault zone roughness can cause slip in the shear direction to be accompanied by fault‐normal movement, modulated by fault‐normal elastic properties, however these effects are poorly understood. Here, we systematically vary the stiffness surrounding the fault in both the shear‐parallel and fault‐normal directions, to investigate the origin of slip instabilities and changes in friction constitutive properties. We confirm the transition from stable sliding through slow slip to stick‐slip due to reduced fault‐parallel stiffness, and that the occurrence of different types of slip events can be explained by the ratio between shear and critical stiffness. In contrast, reducing the fault‐normal stiffness produces stick‐slip instabilities under conditions where the conventional critical stiffness criterion predicts stable sliding, and does not produce transitional slow slip events. Our data suggest that: (a) the stability criterion for frictional slip should be modified to incorporate fault‐normal stiffness, and (b) the unexpected slip instabilities may represent wrinkle‐like slip pulses, possibly due to a stiffness asymmetry introduced by lowering the fault normal stiffness on one side of the fault. This implies that earthquakes may occur when the fault‐normal stiffness, or bulk modulus for natural faults, is decreased and/or asymmetric across the fault zone, both of which may be common in nature.