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Home > USGS Earthquake Science Center Seminars > High-Performance Discrete Element Modeling of Earthquake Surface Fault Rupture
Podcast: USGS Earthquake Science Center Seminars
Episode:

High-Performance Discrete Element Modeling of Earthquake Surface Fault Rupture
Category: Science & Medicine
Duration: 01:00:00
Publish Date: 2022-06-01 17:30:00
Description:

Prof. Estéfan Garcia, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Univ. of Michigan

Earthquake surface fault rupture has historically caused significant damage to structures, highways, lifelines, and other critical infrastructure. Field case histories from several large surface fault-rupturing earthquakes have provided valuable insight into the impacts of this hazard on the built environment, but their relative infrequency requires that mechanisms of these hazards be elucidated through supplementary means such as sandbox modeling. In the presented research, numerical models are developed using the discrete element method (DEM) to serve as “virtual experiments” that overcome the physical limitations of traditional sandbox modeling. The advantages of DEM in terms of accurately representing fundamentally discontinuous media and seamlessly capturing large-strain behavior are discussed. The results of DEM simulations of reverse and normal fault rupture are shown to be consistent with past physical studies in terms of the path of fault rupture propagation from bedrock to the ground surface and the manifestation of the resulting fault scarp. Pioneering work on the application of DEM with high-performance computing to surface fault rupture interaction with shallow foundations and in complex site conditions is presented. Finally, guidelines are provided for applying DEM in future studies of surface fault rupture, and potential application to larger scales of regional tectonic deformations over several kilometers are discussed.
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