Destabilization of long-wavelength Love and Stoneley waves in slow sliding

Love waves are dispersive interfacial waves that are a mode of response for anti-plane motions of an elastic layer bonded to an elastic half-space. Similarly, Stoneley waves are interfacial waves in bonded contact of dissimilar elastic half-spaces, when the displacements are in the plane of the solids. It is shown that in slow sliding, long-wavelength Love and Stoneley waves are destabilized by friction. Friction is assumed to have a positive instantaneous logarithmic dependence on slip rate and a logarithmic rate weakening behavior at steady-state. Long-wavelength instabilities occur generically in sliding with rate- and state-dependent friction. even when an interfacial wave does not exist. For slip at low rates, such instabilities are quasi-static in nature, i.e., the phase velocity is negligibly small in comparison to a shear wave speed. The existence of an interfacial wave in bonded contact permits an instability to propagate with a speed of the order of a shear wave speed even in slow sliding, indicating that the quasi-static approximation is not valid in such problems. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.