Publications related to Epicenter

Rigorous Assessment of Natural Frequencies of Fault-Originated Travelling Waves

Mario Paolone, Hamidreza Karami, Zhaoyang Wang, Pier Luigi Dragotti

This paper presents a rigorous assessment of natural frequencies associated with fault-originated travelling waves in power networks, factoring in the presence of multiple junctions and branches. The proposed assessment exploits the Baum-Liu-Tesche (BLT) e ...

2024

Frictional weakening leads to unconventional singularities during dynamic rupture propagation

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Federica Paglialunga, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

Earthquakes i.e. frictional ruptures, are commonly described by singular solutions of shear crack motions. These solutions assume a square root singularity order around the rupture tip and a constant shear stress value behind it, implying scale-independent ...

2024

Influence of Viscous Lubricant on Nucleation and Propagation of Frictional Ruptures

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Federica Paglialunga

Fluids are pervasive in the Earth's crust and saturate fractures and faults. The combination of fluids and gouge layers developing along faults can generate fluids of different viscosities. Such viscous fluids were found to influence the reactivation, fric ...

2023

Single-Well Pore Pressure Preconditioning for Enhanced Geothermal System Stimulation

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain, Barnaby Padraig Fryer

The stress state is an important parameter in terms of both earthquake nucleation and rupture. Here, a new stimulation technique is proposed for Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGSs), which have previously been burdened with a number of high-profile incidence ...

2023

On the scale dependence in the dynamics of frictional rupture: Constant fracture energy versus size-dependent breakdown work

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Mathias Alexandre David Lebihain, Federica Paglialunga, Fabian Barras

Potential energy stored during the inter-seismic period by tectonic loading around faults is released during earthquakes as radiated energy, frictional dissipation and fracture energy. The latter is of first importance since it is expected to control the n ...

2022

Determination of Parameters Characteristic of Dynamic Weakening Mechanisms During Seismic Faulting in Cohesive Rocks

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Chiara Cornelio

While sliding at seismic slip-rates of ∼1 m/s, natural faults undergo an abrupt decrease of shear stress called dynamic weakening. Asperity-scale processes related to flash heating and weakening and, meso-scale (mm-cm) processes involving shear across the ...

AGU2022

Transition from sub-Rayleigh anticrack to supershear crack propagation in snow avalanches

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Bertil Trottet, Grégoire Bobillier, Alec van Herwijnen

Avalanches can occur when a porous snow layer lies beneath a dense cohesive snow slab. Field experiments and simulations now reveal different crack-propagation regimes in slab avalanches, similar to rupture propagation following an earthquake. ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Seismic vulnerability assessment of free-standing massive masonry columns by the 3D Discrete Element Method

Jinwoo Kim

Free-standing masonry column is a recurrent typology of built cultural heritage. Usually raised without seismic design, columns are subject to intense rocking and overturning under strong ground motions. In this paper, a strategy to assess their seismic vu ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2021

Three-dimensional fluid-driven stable frictional ruptures

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion, Alexis Alejandro Sáez Uribe

We investigate the quasi-static growth of a fluid-driven frictional shear crack that propagates in mixed mode (II+III) on a planar fault interface that separates two identical half-spaces of a three-dimensional solid. The fault interface is characterized b ...

2022

Initial effective stress controls the nature of earthquakes

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Fabian Barras

Modern geophysics highlights that the slip behaviour response of faults is variable in space and time and can result in slow or fast ruptures. However, the origin of this variation of the rupture velocity in nature as well as the physics behind it is still ...

Nature Research2020

Zagreb earthquake of 22 March 2020-preliminary report on seismologic aspects and damage to buildings

Nenad Bijelic

Significant characteristics and main consequences of the 5.5 magnitude earthquake that struck Zagreb and its surroundings in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic are presented in the paper. Although, from the seismologic aspect, the earthquake was of moderat ...

CROATIAN SOC CIVIL ENGINEERS-HSGI2020

Seismic response of RC buildings subjected to fling-step in the near-fault region

Pierino Lestuzzi, Amin Karbassi

Fling-step and forward directivity are the major consequences of near-fault ground motions as they can impose unexpected seismic demands on structures located in the vicinity of the fault. The pernicious effect of forward directivity on the seismic behavio ...

2020

Origin of High-Frequency Radiation During Laboratory Earthquakes

François Xavier Thibault Passelègue

We monitor dynamic rupture propagation during laboratory stick-slip experiments performed on saw-cut Westerly granite under upper crustal conditions (10-90 MPa). Spectral analysis of high-frequency acoustic waveforms provided evidence that energy radiation ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2019

Emergence of Cracklike Behavior of Frictional Rupture: The Origin of Stress Drops

Jean-François Molinari, Thibault Didier Roch, Fabian Barras

The process of frictional rupture, i.e., the failure of frictional systems, abounds in the technological and natural world around us, ranging from squealing car brake pads to earthquakes along geological faults. A general framework for understanding and in ...

American Physical Society2019

Unstable Slip Pulses and Earthquake Nucleation as a Nonequilibrium First-Order Phase Transition

Jean-François Molinari, Fabian Barras

The onset of rapid slip along initially quiescent frictional interfaces, the process of “earthquake nucleation,” and dissipative spatiotemporal slippage dynamics play important roles in a broad range of physical systems. Here we first show that interfaces ...

2018

Dislocation Motion and the Microphysics of Flash Heating and Weakening of Faults during Earthquakes

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Andrea Cavallo

Earthquakes are the result of slip along faults and are due to the decrease of rock frictional strength (dynamic weakening) with increasing slip and slip rate. Friction experiments simulating the abrupt accelerations (>>10 m/s(2)), slip rates (similar to 1 ...

Mdpi Ag2016

Fault reactivation during CO2 sequestration: Effects of well orientation on seismicity and leakage

Victor Vilarrasa Riano

Injection or withdrawal of fluid at depth may trigger felt seismicity. Such human-induced seismicity is a key environmental concern related to the exploitation of natural underground resources. Thus, understanding how to avoid triggering felt earthquakes p ...

Wiley Periodicals, Inc2015

Fast-moving dislocations trigger flash weakening in carbonate-bearing faults during earthquakes

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Andrea Cavallo

Rupture fronts can cause fault displacement, reaching speeds up to several ms(-1) within a few milliseconds, at any distance away from the earthquake nucleation area. In the case of silicate-bearing rocks the abrupt slip acceleration results in melting at ...

Nature Publishing Group2015

Cyclic properties of sand : dynamic behaviour for seismic applications

Emilie Rascol

Seismic wave propagation in granular soils can induce large strain amplitudes in case of strong earthquakes. Seismic motions are irregular in frequency content and in amplitude, and have three different components in orthogonal directions. In this context, ...

EPFL2009