The discontinuous Galerkin method for sequences of earthquakes and aseismic slip

Earthquakes and aseismic slip are typically modelled as a displacement discontinuity on a prescribed infinitesimally thin fault surface embedded in linear elastic or viscoelastic media. The fault slip behaviour can be described by laboratory-derived rate and state friction laws, which are suitable to model frictional sliding throughout the complete seismic cycle, i.e. interseismic, coseismic, and post-seismic phase. The governing time scales vary from years in the interseismic phase to seconds in the coseismic phase and the respective spatial scales vary from hundreds of kilometres of tectonic structures to metres (or less) on-fault. Therefore, simulating the entire seismic cycle is computational challenging and as such mandates utilization of high performance computing (HPC).