Modelling Rupture Dynamics of a Planar Fault in 3-D Half Space by Boundary Integral Equation Method: An Overview

In this article, we first reviewed the method of boundary integral equation (BIEM) for modelling rupture dynamics of a planar fault embedded in a 3-D elastic half space developed recently (ZHANG and CHEN, 2005a,b). By incorporating the half-space Green’s function, we successfully extended the BIEM, which is a powerful tool to study earthquake rupture dynamics on complicated fault systems but limited to full-space model to date, to half-space model. In order to effectively compute the singular integrals in the kernels of the fundamental boundary integral equation, we proposed a regularization procedure consisting of the generalized Apsel-Luco correction and the Karami-Derakhshan algorithm to remove all the singularities, and developed an adaptive integration scheme to efficiently deal with those nonsingular while slowly convergent integrals. The new BIEM provides a powerful tool for investigating the physics of earthquake dynamics. We then applied the new BIEM to investigate the influences of geometrical and physical parameters, such as the dip angle (d) and depth (h) of the fault, radius of the nucleation region (Rasp), slip-weakening distance (Dc), and stress inside (Ti) and outside (Te) the nucleation region, on the dynamic rupture processes on the fault embedded in a 3-D half space, and found that (1) overall pattern of the rupture depends on whether the fault runs up to the free surface or not, especially for strike-slip, (2) although final slip distribution is influenced by the dip angle of the fault, the dip angle plays a less important role in the major feature of the rupture progress, (3) different value of h, d, Rasp, Te, Ti and Dc may influence the balance of energy and thus the acceleration time of the rupture, but the final rupture speed is not controlled by these parameters.