1994 Articles

Dynamics of earthquake faults

Carlson, Jean M.; Langer, James S.; Shaw, Bruce E.

The authors present an overview of ongoing studies of the rich dynamical behavior of the uniform, deterministic Burridge-Knopoff model of an earthquake fault, discussing the model's behavior in the context of current seismology. The topics considered include: (1) basic properties of the model, such as the distinction between small and large events and the magnitude vs frequency distribution; (2) dynamics of individual events, including dynamical selection of rupture propagation speeds; (3) generalizations of the model to more realistic, higher-dimensional models; and (4) studies of predictability, in which artificial catalogs generated by the model are used to test and determine the limitations of pattern recognition algorithms used in seismology.