HR: 0800h
AN: SF41A-0763    [Abstracts]
TI: A Dynamic Finite Element Method for Simulating the Physics of Faults Systems
AU: * Saez, E
EM: saez@esscc.uq.edu.au
AF: QUAKES, Earth Systems Science Computational Centre, The university of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia
AU: * Saez, E
EM: saez@esscc.uq.edu.au
AF: Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator, The university of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia
AU: Mora, P
EM: morap@esscc.uq.edu.au
AF: QUAKES, Earth Systems Science Computational Centre, The university of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia
AU: Mora, P
EM: morap@esscc.uq.edu.au
AF: Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator, The university of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia
AU: Gross, L
EM: gross@esscc.uq.edu.au
AF: QUAKES, Earth Systems Science Computational Centre, The university of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia
AU: Gross, L
EM: gross@esscc.uq.edu.au
AF: Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator, The university of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia
AU: Weatherley, D
EM: dion@esscc.uq.edu.au
AF: QUAKES, Earth Systems Science Computational Centre, The university of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia
AU: Weatherley, D
EM: dion@esscc.uq.edu.au
AF: Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator, The university of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072 Australia
AB: We introduce a dynamic Finite Element method using a novel high level scripting language to describe the physical equations, boundary conditions and time integration scheme. The library we use is the parallel Finley library: a finite element kernel library, designed for solving large-scale problems. It is incorporated as a differential equation solver into a more general library called escript, based on the scripting language Python. This library has been developed to facilitate the rapid development of 3D parallel codes, and is optimised for the Australian Computational Earth Systems Simulator Major National Research Facility (ACcESS MNRF) supercomputer, a 208 processor SGI Altix with a peak performance of 1.1 TFlops. Using the scripting approach we obtain a parallel FE code able to take advantage of the computational efficiency of the Altix 3700. We consider faults as material discontinuities (the displacement, velocity, and acceleration fields are discontinuous at the fault), with elastic behavior. The stress continuity at the fault is achieved naturally through the expression of the fault interactions in the weak formulation. The elasticity problem is solved explicitly in time, using the Saint Verlat scheme. Finally, we specify a suitable frictional constitutive relation and numerical scheme to simulate fault behaviour. Our model is based on previous work on modelling fault friction and multi-fault systems using lattice solid-like models. We adapt the 2D model for simulating the dynamics of parallel fault systems described to the Finite-Element method. The approach uses a frictional relation along faults that is slip and slip-rate dependent, and the numerical integration approach introduced by Mora and Place in the lattice solid model. In order to illustrate the new Finite Element model, single and multi-fault simulation examples are presented.
DE: 8150 Plate boundary--general (3040)
DE: 7209 Earthquake dynamics and mechanics
DE: 3040 Plate tectonics (8150, 8155, 8157, 8158)
DE: 3220 Nonlinear dynamics
DE: 3230 Numerical solutions
SC: Special Focus: Advances in Data Acquisition, Management, Analysis and Display [SF]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting