Dynamic rupture nucleation - time dependent traction_perturbation

PyLith
1

Dear Pylith developers,

I’m using pylith 2.2.2 built from source.

I’m trying to nucleate a dynamic rupture along a planar fault in a gentle way.
Is there a way to prescribe a time dependent shear stress perturbation (smth like an expanding patch of increased shear stress of also gradually increasing magnitude)? I could only find how to prescribe a spatial database of a stress perturbation for time step 0.
Is there still no way to have a time weakening nucleation patch and another friction law along the rest of the fault?

Another question: can I do the same for quasistatic simulations? Can I fix the boundaries of the domain and prescribe a gradually increasing shear stress along the fault (or in the whole domain)? Here the stress profile doesn’t have to be heterogeneous. I would just like to have gradually increasing shear stress in the domain, without having to achieve that with bc.

Thanks!

2

You can use the traction perturbation to create a complex spatial and temporal change in the traction. It uses the same functional form as time-dependent Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions (equation 6.1). See Table 6.11 for the spatial database parameters for the traction perturbation.