Spatiotemporal evolution of a fault shear stress patch due to viscoelastic interseismic fault zone rheology

•Temporal evolution of a fault stress anomaly modeled in a viscoelastic fault zone•Length scale of a stress anomaly grows over time depending on apparent viscosity.•Fault zone rheology governs the minimum dimension of a sustainable stress patch.

We conducted numerical studies to explore how shear stress anomalies on fault planes (shear stress patches) evolve spatiotemporally during the interseismic period under the influence of viscoelastic rheology assigned to fault zones of finite thickness. 2-D viscoelastic models consisting of a fault zone and host rock were sheared to simulate shear stress accumulation along fault zones due to tectonic loading. No fault slip along a distinct fault planes is implied in the model, thus all fault shear motion is accommodated by distributed deformation in the viscoelastic fault zone. Results show that magnitudes of shear stress patches evolve not only temporally, but also spatially, especially when the stress anomaly is created by a geometrical irregularity (asperity) along the interface of an elastic host rock and viscoelastic fault zone. Such shear stress anomalies diffuse spatially so that the spatial dimension of the shear stress patch appears to grow over time. Models with varying fault zone viscoelastic properties and varying fault zone viscosity both show that such spatial diffusion of shear stress is enhanced by increasing the contribution of the viscous behavior. The absolute rate at which shear stress patches grow spatially is generally not influenced by the size of the shear stress patch. Therefore shear stress patches with smaller dimensions will appear to grow quicker, in the relative sense, compared to larger stress patches. These results suggest that the minimum dimensions of shear stress patches that can exist along a fault could be governed by the effective viscosity of the fault zone. Therefore patterns of accumulated shear stress could vary along faults when viscous properties are heterogeneous, for instance due to depth or material heterogeneity, which has implications on how earthquake rupture behavior could vary along faults.