NEW EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS ON THE DIETERICH-RUINA FRICTION LAW

Abstract

The Dieterich-Ruina friction law is widely used in rock friction and earthquake dynamical contexts. It has proven very powerful and versatile over the last decades, being able to reproduce stick-slip as well as fore- and aftershocks and healing of faults. This paper shows that the Dieterich-Ruina friction law can also reproduce the accelerated creep process preceding slip event in a stick-slip system, not only for steel contact, but also for rock contact. The friction law relies on three empirical parameters, which have to be identified for each application. The most common experimental set-up is the velocity step experiment. In this paper an alternative method to identify the parameters is proposed, which uses a stick-slip experiment and a numerical fitting approach.