Mechanisms of Shear Band Formation in Heterogeneous Materials Under Compression: The Role of Pre‐Existing Mechanical Flaws

Abstract

Shear bands are typical manifestations of shear failure processes that play a critical role in accommodating differential displacements at plate boundaries to facilitate tectonic activities in Earth's crust and trigger a range of important geophysical phenomena, such as faulting and earthquake generations. The mechanism of shear band formation is thus a subject of great interest in solid earth geophysics, with a special focus on the problem of strain partitioning in crustal deformations as a function of various physical factors and tectonic environments. Geological observations show that shear localization in rocks under crustal pressure-temperature conditions accommodate a large amount of plastic creep in a heterogeneous manner and produce a complex architecture, characterized