Title: Shear instability as a plausible failure mechanism for EQ >400km

Prompt: What are plausible failure mechanisms for earthquakes >400 km deep?
Paragraph:
Possible mechanisms:
1. Deep EQ is due to an implosion due to a phase transition of material to a
higher density, lower volume phase at depths>410km. The increase in
density due to the reaction would cause an implosion, giving rise to the
earthquake. This mechanism has been largely discredited due to the lack of
a significant isotropic signature in the moment tensor solution of deep-focus
earthquakes.
2. Dehydration embrittlement: dehydration reactions of mineral phases with
high weight percent water would increase the pore pressure in a subducted
oceanic lithosphere slab. This reduces the effective normal stress in the slab
and allows slip to occur on pre-existing fault planes at significantly greater
depths that would normally be possible. This mechanism does not play a
significant role in seismic activity beyond 350 km depth due to the fact that
most dehydration reactions will have reached completion by a pressure
corresponding to 150 to 300 km depth.
3. Transformational faulting: result of the phase transition of a mineral to a
higher density phase occurring in response to shear stress in a fine-grained
shear zone. Arguments: requirements that the faulting region should be very
cold, and contain very little mineral-bound hydroxyl. Higher temperatures or
higher hydroxyl contents preclude the metastable preservation of olivine to
the depths of the deepest earthquakes.
4. Shear instability arises when heat is produced by plastic deformation faster
than it can be conducted away. The result is thermal runaway, a positivefeedback loop of heating, material weakening and strain-localisation within
the shear zone. Continued weakening may result in partial melting along
zones of maximal shear stress.
Choose to focus on shear instability because plastic shear instabilities leading to
earthquakes have not been documented in nature, nor have they been observed in
natural materials in the laboratory. Compared to other mechanisms, there arent
that many studies on this mechanism. Also other mechanisms have
challenges/limitations that are yet to be resolved.
Sources:
1. Seismological constraints on the mechanism of deep earthquakes:
temperature dependence of deep earthquake source properties Douglas A
Wiens - Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors Volume 127, Issues 14,
1 December 2001, Pages 145163
2. Shear instability in a viscoelastic material as the cause of deep focus
earthquakesMasaki Ogawa, Journal of Geophysical research, Volume 92,
Issue B13, 10 December 1987, Pages 1380113810
3. Title: The Mechanics of Deep Earthquakes, Authors: Green, H. W., II &
Houston, H., Journal: Annual Review Of Earth And Planetary Sciences, Volume
23, pp. 169-214.

4. Metastable mantle phase transformations and deep earthquakes in

subducting oceanic lithosphere, Stephen H. Kirby, Seth Stein, Emile A. Okal,

David C. Rubie, Review of Geophysics: Volume 34, Issue 2, May 1996, Pages
261306