Energy budget of quasi-dynamic earthquake cycle

The elastic medium that hosts several, multi-scale, faults could be regarded as an energy reservoir that is charged by the far field stress rate and discharged by friction dissipation during earthquake slips on the faults.  In this study, we carefully analyze the energy budget variations that occur throughout a synthetic, 2D plane-strain, earthquake cycle on a fault system comprising of a main fault surrounded by a hierarchy of off-fault slip planes/fractures. We evaluate the rate of kinetic energy variation, stress power across the continuum, far field power supply, and the dissipation due to the rate-and-state friction on the faults given a spectrum of slips ranging from slow-slip to rapid ruptures. We study how the medium's energy budget evolves after these components have been determined.  Additionally, we compute the dissipation rate for a variety of slip rates to determine the contributions of so-called slow-slip events, low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs), and tremors to this budget. We also evaluate the share of off-fault fractures to determine their energetic role during earthquake cycles.