Self-organized criticality in a block lattice model of the brittle crust

An earthquake model is introduced, in which the brittle crust is treated as a two-dimensional system of many blocks divided by faults, and the mechanical behavior of the faults is described by the Burridge-Knopoff stick-slip model. The coherent system naturally;evolves into a self-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, are reproduced. Some ambiguity in simple cellular automata models is also solved. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.