Related papers: Shake and sink: liquefaction without pressurizatio…
Potential energy stored during the inter-seismic period by tectonic loading around faults is released during earthquakes as radiated energy, heat and fracture energy. The latter is of first importance since it controls the nucleation,…
The manipulation of the self-organized critical systems by repeatedly deliberate local relaxations (fillips) affect considerably the dynamics of avalanches and change their evolution. During a fillip, the energy diffuses to the neighboring…
When a flat stress-free surface (i.e., the ground in seismological applications) separating air from a isotropic, homogeneous or horizontally-layered, solid substratum is solicited by a SH plane body wave incident in the substratum, the…
Jamming is a fundamental transition that governs the mechanical behavior of particulate media, including sand, foam and dense suspensions but also biological tissues: Upon compression, particulate media can change from freely flowing to a…
Frictional weakening by vibrations was first invoked in the 70's to explain unusual fault slips and earthquakes, low viscosity during the collapse of impact craters or the extraordinary mobility of sturzstroms, peculiar rock avalanches…
The collapse of man-made and natural structures is a complex phenomenon that has been studied for centuries. We propose a new approach to understanding catastrophic instabilities, based on the idea that they do not occur at the critical…
Viscosity, the internal friction of fluids, is among the most consequential yet underappreciated properties in physics. This paper explores what would happen if viscosity vanished from all fluids while other material properties remained…
Recent studies have shown that giant landslides seem to be correlated with climatic variations. Nevertheless, the precise processes that are involved in this phenomenon need to be better constrained. In this study, the causes of giant…
Frictional sliding, e.g., earthquakes along geological faults, are mediated either by frictional crack-like ruptures, where interfacial (fault) slip is accumulated during the entire sliding event, or by frictional pulse-like ruptures,…
The Neo-Deterministic Seismic Hazard Assessment (NDSHA) method reliably and realistically simulates the suite of earthquake ground motions that may impact civil populations as well as their heritage buildings. The modeling technique is…
A minimalist stochastic model of primary soil salinity is proposed, in which the rate of soil salinization is determined by the balance between dry and wet salt deposition and the intermittent leaching events caused by rainfall events. The…
Within the context of earthquake-resistant design of shallow foundations, the present study is concerned with the determination of the seismic bearing capacity of a circular footing resting on the surface of a heterogene-ous purely cohesive…
We analyze the space-time patterns of earthquake occurrence in southern California using a new method that treats earthquakes as a phase dynamical system. The system state vector is used to obtain a probability measure for current and…
In many interesting physical settings, such as the vulcanization of rubber, the introduction of permanent random constraints between the constituents of a homogeneous fluid can cause a phase transition to a random solid state. In this…
We simulate the effects of diagenesis, cementation and compaction on the elastic properties of shales and sandstones with four different petro-elastical theories and a basin-evolution model, based on constant heating and sedimentation…
The aim of this paper is to propose a 2D computational algorithm for modeling of the trigger and the propagation of shallow landslides caused by rainfall. We used a Molecular Dynamics (MD) inspired model, similar to discrete element method…
Catastrophic transitions, where a system shifts abruptly between alternate steady states, are a generic feature of many nonlinear systems. Recently these regime shift were suggested as the mechanism underlies many ecological catastrophes,…
Seismic analysis of earthen dams is paramount to evaluate the risk of potential liquefaction and strain softening that can cause flow failure. Even though the current state of the art has moved away from the simplified empirical methods,…
The elliptical instability is a generic instability which takes place in any rotating flow whose streamlines are elliptically deformed. Up to now, it has been widely studied in the case of a constant, non-zero differential rotation between…
Scaling analysis reveals striking regularities in earthquake occurrence. The time between any one earthquake and that following it is random, but it is described by the same universal-probability distribution for any spatial region and…