Long-range dispersion and spatial diffusion of fault waves in the Burridge-Knopoff earthquake model

Abstract

The Burridge-Knopoff model of earthquakes has recently gained increased interest for the consistency of the predicted energy released by sismic faults, with the Gutenberg-Richter scaling law. The present work suggests an improvement of this model to account for long-range dispersions and large spatial diffusion of sismic faults. An enhancement of the threshold speed of shock waves driven by translated fault fronts is pointed out and shown to result from the interactions between components of the system situated far aways them and others. Due to the enhanced threshold speed, size of the sismic fault gets increased but a control effect can still be gained from tunable dispersion extent irrespective of the total length of the system. To the viewpoint of the Burridge-Knopoff block-lattice model, this last consideration introduces the possibility of sizable but finite interactions among infinitely aligned massive blocks. Implications on the fault wave propagation are examined by numerical simulations of the improved nonlinear partial differential equation.