A Suite of Exercises for Testing Dynamic Earthquake Rupture Codes

Date: 4/25/2019

Time: 06:00 PM

Room: Grand Ballroom

Earthquakes are complicated, and a range of techniques are used to study them. Computational simulations are included in this toolbox of techniques. A particular type of computational simulations is called ‘dynamic earthquake rupture simulations’. Dynamic earthquake rupture simulations provide a multitude of capabilities. They incorporate the fault geometry, the time-dependent stresses on and off the faults, the response of the off-fault rocks to stressing, and the behavior of fault friction. These simulations produce results that include ground and subsurface wave-propagation throughout the model, and slip-velocity patterns on the faults. With these impressive capabilities, these types of simulations are also challenging in that there are no analytic solutions with which to test them. The 30-member international SCEC-USGS Dynamic Earthquake Rupture Code Verification Group has tackled this problem by providing a suite of exercises to verify that these types of computer codes are working as expected. We have constructed 40 earthquake-rupture exercises for people to use to test their codes. These exercises are available on our website scecdata.usc.edu/cvws.

For more details about our group and the benchmark exercises, please also see our paper: Harris et al. (2018), A suite of exercises for verifying dynamic earthquake rupture codes, Seism. Res. Lett., 89(3), 1146-1162, https://doi.org/10.1785/0220170222.

Presenting Author: Ruth Harris

Authors