SCEC Award Number 15037 View PDF
Proposal Category Collaborative Proposal (Integration and Theory)
Proposal Title Making the Community Fault Model Version 5 Accessible to Earthquake Simulators
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Terry Tullis Brown University Michael Barall Invisible Software, Inc.
Other Participants John H. Shaw (Harvard University), Andreas Plesch (Harvard University)
SCEC Priorities 2e, 4e, 3f SCEC Groups Simulators
Report Due Date 03/15/2016 Date Report Submitted 03/06/2016
Project Abstract
 The goal of this project was to convert the SCEC Community Fault Model (CFM) into a form that is ac-cessible for use by earthquake simulators. The conversion turned out to be much more difficult than we expected, for two primary reasons:
(a). The CFM does not contain slip rates or rake angles, which are essential for constructing the simulator input files. So slip rates and rake angles must be obtained from other sources.
(b). The CFM contains surface topography, which must somehow be removed because simulators require the earth’s surface to be flat.
We made substantial progress in addressing both of these major difficulties, as described in this report. We also addressed several more minor difficulties.
In the end, we succeeded in generating a simulator input file containing the same triangular fault elements as a large part of the CFM. There are several existing earthquake simulator codes that could use this input file. However, there are still issues that need to be addressed, and so in our judgment the result is not yet ready for publication.
Intellectual Merit The goal is to increase the usefulness of SCEC-funded research, by converting the SCEC Community Fault Model into a form that can be used in numerical simulations performed by earthquake simulators.
Broader Impacts The potential benefit is to allow earthquake simulators to use more accurate fault models, which exist but have not been readily accessible.
Exemplary Figure none submitted