SCEC Award Number 17170 View PDF
Proposal Category Individual Proposal (Integration and Theory)
Proposal Title An Integrated tool for describing the rheology of litho-tectonic blocks and fault zones
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Laurent Montesi University of Maryland
Other Participants
SCEC Priorities 3b, 1c, 1b SCEC Groups Geodesy, SDOT, CXM
Report Due Date 06/15/2018 Date Report Submitted 08/09/2018
Project Abstract
 As a contribution to the Community Rheology Model, this project developed and distributed an intuitive tool for the exploration and study of strength profile. Built as a Matlab Graphical User Interface, this tool allows the use to define a stratigraphic column, associated with it a temperature profile, taken for example from CTM, select rheologies and assumption on pore fluid pressure and grain size, and compute a strength profile. The tool also allows the use to compute an effective rheology (relation between strain rate and integrated strength) for the lithosphere as a whole, which can used for further modeling.
Intellectual Merit The project allows SCEC community scientists to explore the effect of rheological assumptions on the lithosphere-scale strength profiles. This helps identifying the important parameters to include in the Community Rheological Model in order to better understand the stress state of Southern California, the origin of postseismic deformation, and the modalities of stress transfer from one fault to the next over various time scales.
Broader Impacts RHEOL_GUI can be used for training and scientific exploration even by non-specialist (provided they have access to Matlab). The Graphical User Interface makes it intuitive to manipulate the structure of the crust and implement various rheologies to identify, for example, where in the lithosphere strength is maximum, and which depth range support little stress.
Exemplary Figure Figure 1: Screenshot of the RHEOL_GUI interface for an example structure of a 30 km crust (10 km quartz, 20 km feldspar) over a 70 km mantle, with an example temperature profile coming from CTM. (Montési, SCEC report, 2018)