Novel experimental design for the study of seismic processes based on the stick-slip mechanism.

Seismicity is the result of the interaction between tectonic plates in relative motion where the underlying mechanism of earthquake generation in seismic subduction areas is stick-slip. In reality, seismicity is a complex phenomenon as it involves processes that take place from within the Earth. A thorough understanding of seismicity requires theoretical and experimental approaches. The dynamics in subduction zones occur when two tectonic plates, one on top of the other, are in relative motion where the plate below is in motion due to convective processes within the Earth. Due to the roughness of both surfaces, the underlying mechanism that gives rise to seismicity is stick-slip. In this work, an experimental stick-slip model is proposed, which simulates the relative motion of two rough surfaces by the interaction of two blocks covered by sandpaper with a certain degree of roughness. In this experimental model, the interaction between rough surfaces (sandpaper), with a relative motion in opposite directions to each other, produces stick-slip events (synthetic seismicity), which mimic real seismicity. Here we present the first analyses of synthetic seismicity by calculating the Gutenberg-Richter law, temporal correlations and characterization in terms of organization and order from the Fisher-Shannon method for each synthetic catalogue.