LUCILE BRUHAT PhD, Geophysics

Mechanical behavior of interseismic slip

 

With Paul Segall (Stanford)

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I have been interested in looking at how interseismic slip, or fault coupling, accumulates on megathrust faults. For that, I combine analysis of long-term deformation rates, concentrating the attention on kinematic inversions of GPS and tide gauge/leveling data, and physics-based modeling.

 

I have developed a new method to characterize interseismic slip rates, that allows slip to penetrate up dip into the locked region. This simple model considered deep interseismic slip as a crack loaded at its downdip end, and provided analytical expressions for stress drop within the crack, slip and slip rate along the fault.

 

Most of my PhD work focused on addressing the mechanical behavior of interseismic coupling in the Cascadia subduction zone (Bruhat and Segall, 2016, 2017). I have also extended this methodology for viscoelastic strike-slip earthquake cycle models (Bruhat, 2020).