SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY IN A BLOCK LATTICE MODEL OF THE BRITTLE CRUST

An earthquake model is introduced, in which the brittle crust is treat ed as a two-dimensional system of many blocks divided by faults, and t he mechanical behavior of the faults is described by the Burridge-Knop off stick-slip model. The coherent system naturally;evolves into a sel f-organized critical state. Some universal scaling laws of seismicity, such as the Gutenberg-Richter law with the b value in agreement with the observational result and the fractal feature of fault patterns, ar e reproduced. Some ambiguity in simple cellular automata models is als o solved. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.