Abstract
A simple slip-weakening friction law, which is presented by a reduction of friction coefficient with the increasing fault slip, is adopted to simulate the fault rupture process at the initial stage of earthquake generation. It is implemented into GeoFEM with Newmark method for dynamic analysis. The fault is modeled by master-slave contact element. A large-scale 3-D simulation of dynamic fault rupture of a part of Northeast Japan area with over 2 million finite element nodes is performed on the Earth Simulator. The attempt of such a large-scale FE simulation has been achieved and the dynamic fault rupture process is presented.
