RESUMO
Most pores and some cracks in several rocks, as directly viewed with a new technique, have a shape that suggests an origin early in the history of these rocks. Thus, behavior in the laboratory may be a reliable indication of behavior in the earth's crust, for electrical resistivity, permeability, or other properties that depend on microporosity.
RESUMO
Frictional sliding on sawcuts and faults in laboratory samples of granite and gabbro is markedly temperature-dependent. At pressures from 1 to 5 kilobars, stick-slip gave way to stable sliding as temperature was increased from 200 to 500 degrees Celsius. Increased temperature with depth could thus cause the abrupt disappearance of earthquakes noted at shallow depths in California.
RESUMO
At a confining pressure of a few kilobars, deformation of many sedimentary rocks, altered mafic rocks, porous volcanic rocks, and sand is ductile, in that instabilities leading to audible elastic shocks are absent. At pressures of 7 to 10 kilobars, however, unstable faulting and stick-slip in certain of these rocks was observed. This high pressure-low temperature instability might be responsible for earthquakes in deeply buried sedimentary or volcanic sequences.
RESUMO
Electrical resistivity of water-saturated crystalline rock such as granite, diabase, dunite, or quartzite changes by an order of magnitude prior to fracture of the rock in compression. The effect observed even under high confining pressure is due to formation of open cracks which first appear at one-third to two-thirds the fracture stress.
RESUMO
Stick-slip often accompanies frictional sliding in laboratory experi ments with geologic materials. Shallow focus earthquakes may represent stick slip during sliding along old or newly formed faults in the earth In such a situation, observed stress drops repre sent release of a small fraction of the stress supported by the rock surround ing the earthquake focus.
