Fabian Barras - Slip slidin’ away: The rupture mechanics at the onset of catastrophic failures in geomaterials

During this cold winter in Oslo, we certainly all have experienced the unsteady nature of friction and the sudden loss of stress bearing capacity that initiates catastrophic sliding. A similar kind of frictional rupture arises at the onset of a wide variety of natural disasters that includes earthquakes, landslides, as well as snow avalanches. In this talk, I will focus on the incipient stage of these catastrophic events that is characterized by the local nucleation of failure and its rapid propagation towards intact regions of the material. I will discuss how the analogy to fracture mechanics can be exploited to describe the dynamics of these rupture fronts and develop quantitative models to characterize the onset of failure in geomaterials.