Frictional heating on a fault zone with finite thickness

Summary. The problem of frictional heating on a fault of finite thickness is considered. Temperature distributions during and after faulting are obtained for faults of various thicknesses. A thick fault approximation is shown to be valid if a fault has a thickness greater than about 1 cm. The thickness of the melted zone is predicted for various frictional stress levels and displacements. The predicted thicknesses are shown to be in reasonable agreement with field observations.