SCEC Award Number 13101 View PDF
Proposal Category Workshop Proposal
Proposal Title Workshop on Comparison and Validation of Earthquake Simulators
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Terry E. Tullis Brown University
Other Participants
SCEC Priorities 2, 4, 1 SCEC Groups WGCEP, EFP, FARM
Report Due Date 10/08/2013 Date Report Submitted N/A
Project Abstract
 This Earthquake Simulators workshop was intended to allow participants in the SCEC Collaborative Project on Comparison, Verification, and Validation of Earthquake Simulators, and those with general interest in the topic, to meet to discuss the progress of the project to date and to plan for future goals and activities involving earthquake simulation within SCEC. Various people with results to present did so. Results to date suggest that ruptures jump less far from one fault to another for the simulators than for dynamic rupture codes and discussion ensued as to possible ways to modify the treatment of fault-to-fault jumps by simulators to encourage them to jump the larger distances seen in the dynamic rupture codes and in real earthquakes. Modeling of one of the UCERF3 faults models has not yet begun; we settled on starting with the Zheng deformation model. Looking farther forward, there was general discussion concerning what may be the best way to advance earthquake simulator development and use. The need for a TAG comparing the results of different simulators appears to have passed and the best home for earthquake simulator research within SCEC may be within the WGCEP.
Intellectual Merit This work helps SCEC understand the interactions that occur between earthquakes via comparisons between the behavior of various physics-based earthquake simulators and that of real earthquakes.
Broader Impacts This effort to understand the interactions between earthquakes via physics-based earthquake simulators has the potential for being used in future versions of the Unified California Earthquake Rupture Forecast and insights from theses simulators has already helped quite the development of UCERF3. The collaborative atmosphere that has grown up around the collaborative effort, as exemplified by interactions at the workshop, has promoted synergistic interactions within SCEC.
Exemplary Figure Figure 1. Illustration of rupture jumping from one fault to another, using simulator RSQSim, compressional stepover case. The initial rupture occurs on fault section 1, the one shown in the lower left. Fault section 2, shown in the upper right lies 1000 m behind section 1; to of both is at Earth’s surface. The color contours show the maximum slip and the grey contours show the position of the rupture front in 1 second intervals. Rupture on section 2 occurs nearly when rupture on section 1 reaches the right end of section 1. From Richards-Dinger (2012, http://www.scec.org/workshops/2013/simulators/index.html.)