Effect of variation of the coefficient of friction on the temperature at
the level of the fault lips
Abstract
Earth’s crust is an anisotropic and purely heterogeneous medium, which
is justified by existence of different discontinuities, our study aims
to show the effect of the variation of coefficient of friction on the
evolution of temperature and its impact on seismic forecasting. In this
work, we are model in 2D the variation of thermal energy and temperature
produced by friction at the level of fault lip as function of depth of
the seismic focus and at different value of time. Earthquakes are born
when the energy accumulated by friction at the level of fault is
suddenly released causing damage, sometimes noticeable on the surface of
earth (macroseisms), and sometimes not at all noticeable on the surface
of earth (microseisms), then energy which occurs before is important to
forecasting earthquake. Assuming that coefficient of friction is
variable, our results have enabled us to highlight the fact that, the
greater the coefficient of friction, more the temperature increases,
although the temperature profile increase over time but not linearly
reflecting the presence of different asperities and discontinuities
zone; slip generated at the level of fault occur a variation of
temperature on specific points called roughness in common agreement with
the literature. A large part of energy produced by friction is
dissipated in heat causing a local increases in temperature which a very
short duration and called flash contact temperature, and that despite
the fact that the temperature evolved in time and space, it all
converged towards a perfectly distinguishable fixed point. In this draft
article, we model by mains of mathematical expressions, the thermal
energy produced by friction at the level of the lip of fault as well as
the variation of the temperature occurs by friction at the level of the
lip of fault by admitting the variation of coefficient of friction. The
results which we obtained are interesting and especially carrying the
object of a publication. We showed in this work that : Slip generated at
the level of fault occur a variation of temperature on specific points
called asperity. 1 Beyond a certain value of the depth of the seismic
focus, the variation of the temperature produced by friction is null.
Temperature and energy profiles obtained following the variation of the
friction coefficient reveals heterogeneous character of earth crust’s.