GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L01308, doi:10.

1029/2006GL027931, 2007

Reconstruction of seismic faulting by high-velocity friction

experiments: An example of the 1995 Kobe earthquake
Kazuo Mizoguchi,1 Takehiro Hirose,2 Toshihiko Shimamoto,2 and Eiichi Fukuyama,1
Received 25 August 2006; revised 31 October 2006; accepted 15 November 2006; published 12 January 2007.

[1] High-velocity friction experiments on a fault gouge

collected from the Nojima fault activated during the 1995
Kobe earthquake showed that the friction coefficient
decreased from 0.63 to 0.18 over a slip weakening
distance, Dc, at high slip rates of
1 m/s. The dramatic
drop in friction coefficient of more than 0.3 is consistent
with that for the Kobe earthquake estimated from
seismological observations. Experimentally determined
Dc becomes 5 m at a higher normal stress of 1.85 MPa,
close to the order of magnitude of seismologically
determined Dc of 0.5 to 1 m. The difference in Dc is not
significant because the fracture energy consumed during
frictional slip is the same order of 106 N/m for both cases.
Here we show that frictional behavior of a fault during an
earthquake can be predicted by conducting high-velocity
friction experiments. Citation: Mizoguchi, K., T. Hirose,
T. Shimamoto, and E. Fukuyama (2007), Reconstruction of
seismic faulting by high-velocity friction experiments: An
example of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34,
L01308, doi:10.1029/2006GL027931.

1. Introduction
[2] Recently, a great interest has been paid to friction
experiments on rocks at high slip rates, comparable to those
of
1 m/s during seismic fault motion. They show dramatic
slip weakening of frictional strength associated with frictional melting [Tsutsumi and Shimamoto, 1997; Hirose and
Shimamoto, 2005] and formation of a silica gel layer on the
fault [Goldsby and Tullis, 2002; Di Toro et al., 2004].
However these studies were performed on bare rock without
gouge materials. The fault gouge, an accumulated wear
product of slip between fault surfaces, is present in major
faults, such as the San Andreas fault [Wu et al., 1975]. To
accurately extrapolate the frictional behaviour of a natural
fault during an earthquake, we perform high-velocity friction experiments using its fault gouge.
[3] The dynamic rupture process during large earthquakes has been analysed using slip weakening models
[Ida, 1972]. In the model, the friction coefficient of the fault
decreases from an initial value mi to a residual value mr over
the slip weakening distance Dc. Thus these frictional
parameters related to the slip dependent behavior are crucial

1
Earthquake Research Department, National Research Institute for
Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, Tsukuba, Japan.
2
Department of Geology and Mineralogy, Division of Earth and
Planetary Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto,
Japan.

Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.

0094-8276/07/2006GL027931

for strong ground motion associated with the earthquake

faulting. The 1995 Kobe earthquake (M7.2), southwest
Japan, has been seismologically well-examined. The relation between stress and slip at each location on the fault is
determined based on the inversion of the seismic waveforms and Dc is estimated at 0.5
1 m [Ide and Takeo,
1997]. The Nojima fault, southwest Japan, is one of the
faults that moved during the Kobe earthquake [Nakata and
Yomogida, 1995]. In-situ stress measurements at boreholes
drilled along the fault after the earthquake and the deformation rate analysis (DRA) of the core samples indicated mr
of less than 0.3 [Ikeda et al., 2001; Tadokoro et al., 2001;
Tsukahara et al., 2001; Yamamoto and Yabe, 2001]. mi was
estimated to be about 0.6 from the difference of stress
orientation before and after the earthquake [Yamashita et
al., 2004]. The value of mi is approximately consistent with
the general results of friction coefficient of rocks measured
in laboratory experiments [Byerlee, 1978]. However the
value of Dc is more than several orders of magnitudes, and
the friction coefficient decrease during slip of more than
0.3 is one order of magnitude, larger and than those of
previous laboratory results at low slip rates [Marone, 1998].
From the high-velocity fiction experiments on the Nojima
fault gouge, we present data on mi, mr, and Dc and discuss
their relationship with those determined from geophysical
observations.

2. Experimental Procedure
[4] All experiments were conducted on fault gouge samples collected from an outcrop of the Nojima fault [Monzawa
and Otsuki, 2003; Otsuki et al., 2003], using a rotary-shear,
high-speed frictional testing apparatus [Shimamoto and
Tsutsumi, 1994]. The gouge sample of 1 g in weight was
put between a pair of granite cylinders with rough end
surfaces ground by #80 SiC powders (Figure 1a). The gouge
layer, about 1 mm thick, was sheared under applied normal
stress between the cylinders. The gouge layer was not
saturated with aqueous water, but contained moisture in
air. A Teflon sleeve covered the fault to confine the gouge
in the fault during shearing. As the slip rate varies within the
sample as a function of distance from the center of rotation
axis, we used an equivalent slip velocity Veq, defined such
that t Veq S gives the rate of total frictional work on fault
area S, assuming that shear stress t is constant over the fault
surface [Shimamoto and Tsutsumi, 1994].

3. Results
[5] The frictional behaviour of the fault gouge sheared at
a normal stress of 0.62 MPa was strongly dependent on Veq
(Figure 1b). The coefficient of friction at Veq of 1.03 m/s

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0.18, respectively (Figure 2a). Contrary to this, D c

decreased from
40 to 5 m with increasing normal stress
up to 1.87 MPa (Figure 2b).

4. Discussion and Conclusions

Figure 1. High-velocity friction experiment on fault

gouge. (a) Schematic diagram of sample assembly during
the experiments. (b) Representative mechanical behaviors at
fast (black) and slow (grey) slip rates. Dashed grey line
shows a curve fitted by exponential decay equation (1).

[7] The friction coefficient of the Nojima fault was

estimated to decrease from 0.6 to less than 0.3 during
the Kobe earthquake [Ikeda et al., 2001; Tadokoro et al.,
2001; Tsukahara et al., 2001; Yamamoto and Yabe, 2001;
Yamashita et al., 2004]. The high-velocity friction experiments on the Nojima fault gouge show that the frictional
strength decreased from 0.63 to 0.18. The strength drop
observed for this earthquake is found by the high-velocity
frictional properties of the gouge. Dc of 5 to 40 m obtained
in our high-velocity friction experiments is larger than that
of 0.5
1 m which was seismically determined for the
1995 earthquake [Ide and Takeo, 1997]. Considering the
normal stress dependence observed in the experiments,
however, the experimental results approach the same order
of magnitude as seismological Dc (Figure 2b). The analysis
of the seismic waveform inversion also showed shear stress
drop of 2
4 MPa [Ide and Takeo, 1997]. Assuming a
simple slip weakening curve of linear stress decrease as
slip increases to Dc [Andrews, 1976], the fracture energy
described as an area of 1/2  Dc  (stress drop) are

(HVR178) decreased remarkably with displacement, while

that at Veq of 0.006 m/s (HVR 239) did not change with
displacement, being at a high constant level of 0.75. Highvelocity sliding dramatically decreased the frictional
strength of the fault gouge. The slip weakening curve at
the high slip rate can be fitted by the following exponential
decay equation


ln0:05  d
m mr mi  mr exp
dc

where mr is residual coefficient of friction, mi is initial

coefficient of friction, d is displacement after an initial
friction point. Because the exponential decay friction curve
continues to decrease at a displacement to infinite, we
define dc as a displacement at which (mi  mr) reduces to
5% of (mi  mr), and assume that dc represents Dc.
Mechanical parameters determined by an exponential curve
fit with the above equation (1) for HVR178 run are: initial
frictional coefficient mi = 0.62, residual frictional coefficient
mr = 0.08, slip weakening distance Dc = 22.5 m.
[6] We conducted a series of experiments at Veq of
1.03 m/s, varying normal stress from 0.34 to 1.87 MPa.
The exponential curve fitting on the results shows dependency of normal stress on shear stress at the initial and
residual state, and slip-weakening distance (Figure 2). There
is a linear relationship between normal and shear stresses
at each state, which have the similar intercept value of

0.1 MPa at a normal stress of 0 MPa. If the high velocity
frictional property of the Nojima fault gouge obeys the
traditional friction law (Coulomb-Mohr equation), this
intercept is attributed to the frictional resistance of the
Teflon sleeve. The data shown in Figure 1b were corrected
for this Teflon friction. From the slopes of the linear
relationships, the average mi and mr in the normal stress
range of 0.34 to 1.87 MPa were determined to be 0.63 and

Figure 2. Relevance of high-velocity frictional behavior of

the fault to normal stress. (a) Normal stress versus shear
stress for the initial and residual state. Frictional coefficients
for peak and steady state determined by a least square fit with
the Coulomb-Mohr linear equation (dash lines) were 0.6258
(0.0612) and 0.1701 (0.0197), respectively. (b) Slip
weakening distance (Dc) plotted as a function of normal
stress. Dc at lower normal stresses ranges from 20 to 40 m,
while Dc at higher normal stress decrease to around 5 m.

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[10] Acknowledgments. We thank Christopher A. J. Wibberley for

his constructive comments that helped to improve this manuscript. We are
grateful to A. Tsutsumi, H. Noda and D. Sone for scientific discussions.

References

Figure 3. Fracture energy estimated from the highvelocity friction curves at each normal stress. Meshed area
defined by mi, mr and Dc in the exponential fitting curve
(upper right) corresponds to the calculated fracture energy.

approximately calculated to be about 0.5
1  106 N/m.

The calculation based on our results of high velocity slip
weakening behaviour results in 1
3  10 6 N/m
(Figure 3), which is the same order of fracture energy as
the seismological estimation. Frictional strength of a fault
might reach steady state when the fault consumes fracture
energy of 106 N/m in cases of both nature [Mikumo and
Fukuyama, 2006] and laboratory experiments. The longer
Dc in laboratory experiments can be explained by the lower
stress drop than that in nature. Here, it should be noted that
this consideration can be applied only to high-velocity
experiments conducted at seismic slip rates. For the slower
rate experiments in which the fault did not show slip
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of fracture energy.
[8] Frictional melting and thermal pressurization are
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1980]. They might not cause the decrease in frictional
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was estimated to be around 380C, below the melting point
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moisture-drained weakening [Mizoguchi et al., 2006], have
been reported in recent high-velocity friction experiments. It
should be our future subject to clarify the weakening
mechanism of our experiments.
[9] In this paper, we demonstrated that high-velocity
friction experiments on the Nojima fault gouge yields
similar frictional behaviour to that of the same fault during
the Kobe earthquake. Here we suggest that we can predict
seismic fault motion during an earthquake from conducting
high-velocity friction experiments before an earthquake,
although the weakening mechanism of our experiments is
not clear in present.

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E. Fukuyama and K. Mizoguchi, Earthquake Research Department,

National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention,
Tsukuba 305-0006, Japan. (mizo@bosai.go.jp)
T. Hirose and T. Shimamoto, Department of Geology and Mineralogy,
Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Graduate School of Science,
Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.

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