Fault roughness evolution with slip (Gole Larghe Fault Zone, Italian Alps)

ABSTRACT Fault surface roughness is a principal factor influencing fault and earthquake mechanics. However, little is known on roughness of fault surfaces at seismogenic depths, and particularly on how it evolves with accumulating slip. We have studied seismogenic fault surfaces of the Gole Larghe Fault Zone, which exploit precursor cooling joints of the Adamello tonalitic pluton (Italian Alps). These faults developed at 9-11 km and 250-300°C. Seismic slip along these surfaces, which individually accommodated from 1 to 20 m of net slip, resulted in the production of cm-thick cataclasites and pseudotachylytes (solidified melts produced during seismic slip). The roughness of fault surfaces was determined with a multi-resolution aerial and terrestrial LIDAR and photogrammetric dataset (Bistacchi et al., 2011, Pageoph, doi: 10.1007/s00024-011-0301-7). Fault surface roughness is self-affine, with Hurst exponent H < 1, indicating that faults are comparatively smoother at larger wavelengths. Fault surface roughness is inferred to have been inherited from the precursor cooling joints, which show H ≈ 0.8. Slip on faults progressively modified the roughness distribution, lowering the Hurst exponent in the along-slip direction up to H ≈ 0.6. This behaviour has been observed for wavelengths up to the scale of the accumulated slip along each individual fault surface, whilst at larger wavelengths the original roughness seems not to be affected by slip. Processes that contribute to modify fault roughness with slip include brittle failure of the interacting asperities (production of cataclasites) and frictional melting (production of pseudotachylytes). To quantify the "wear" due to these processes, we measured, together with the roughness of fault traces and their net slip, the thickness and distribution of cataclasites and pseudotachylytes. As proposed also in the tribological literature, we observe that wearing is scale dependent, as smaller wavelength asperities have a shorter interaction distance and are consumed faster with slip than larger ones. However, in faults, production of cataclasites and pseudotachylytes changes the contact area of sliding surfaces by interposing a layer of wear products. This layer may preserve from wearing asperities that are smaller in amplitude than the layer thickness, thus providing a mechanism that is likely to preserve small amplitude/wavelength roughness. These processes have been considered in a new spectral model of wear, which allows to model wear for self-affine surfaces and includes the accumulation of wear products within the fault zone. This model can be used to generalize our results and contribute to reconstruct a realistic model of a seismogenic fault zone (http://roma1.rm.ingv.it/laboratori/laboratorio-hp-ht/usems-project).