International Research Fellowship Program: New Perspectives on Earthquake Mechanics: A Multidisciplinary Study of Physico-Chemical Processes during the Seismic Cycle

Griffith William A, Palo Alto CA

Investigators

Abstract

0754258 Griffith The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. William A. Griffith to work with Dr. Giulio Di Tori at the Instituto Nazionale de Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Rome, Italy. This project will contribute to a new state-of-the art lab which constrains high velocity rock friction experiments with observations from natural seismic and aseismic faults. Understanding the physico-chemical processes controlling earthquake generation is essential in seismic hazard assessment. Destructive earthquakes nucleate at depth (10-15 km), therefore monitoring active faults at the Earth?s surface, or interpreting seismic waves, yields only limited information on earthquake mechanics. Here participating scientists study the earthquake processes by: (i) studying fossil seismic sources now exhumed at the Earth's surface; (ii) working on a a new world class high velocity rock friction apparatus (HVRFA) to perform experiments under deformation conditions typical of earthquakes; (iii) analyzing natural and experimental fault rock materials using a novel multidisciplinary approach involving state of the art techniques in microstructural analysis, mineralogy and petrology; and (iv) producing new theoretical earthquake models calibrated (and firmly constrained) by field observations, mechanical data from rock-friction experiments and analyses of natural and experimental fault rocks.