Machine learning bridges microslips and slip avalanches of sheared
granular gouge
Abstract
Understanding the origin of stress avalanche of fault gouges may offer
deeper insights into many geophysical processes such as earthquakes.
Microslips of sheared granular gouges were found to be precursors of
large slip events, but the documented relation between local and global
avalanches remains largely qualitative. We examine the stick-slip
behavior of a slowly sheared granular system using discete element
method simulations. The microslips, i.e., local avalanche events, are
found to demonstrate significantly different statistical and spatial
characteristics between the stick and slip states. We further
investigate the correlation between the global stress fluctuations and
the features extracted from microslips based on the machine learning
(ML) approach. The data-driven model that incorporates the information
of the spatial distribution of microslips can robustly predict the
magnitude of stress fluctuation. A further feature importance analysis
confirms that the spatial patterns of microslips manifest key
information governing the global stress fluctuations.