Eric M. Dunham

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Harvard University Pierce Hall 288 29 Oxford St. Cambridge, MA 02138 office: Pierce 288 tel: 617-495-1829 email: edunham + @ + fas.harvard.edu

Formerly a Reginald A. Daly postdoctoral fellow, I am now a Research Associate in Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and a Lecturer on Applied Mathematics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. I am engaged in a number of active collaborations with Professor Jim Rice and members of his research group.

Recent laboratory measurements on fault-zone materials place constraints on theoretical models describing the rapid weakening of faults during earthquakes. Incorporation of these models into computer simulations of earthquakes permits an exploration of seismic phenomena over a diversity of length and time scales. These range from tectonic loading of faults in excess of a hundred kilometers over hundreds of years to the nearly microsecond evolution of micron-scale contacts between granulated rock within the fault core during earthquakes. Seismic hazard assessments, currently based only on a sparse catalog of strong ground motion records from large earthquakes, will increasingly be based upon realistic simulations of hypothetical ruptures over the coming years. This challenge demands identifying the physical processes governing earthquake dynamics and describing them with mathematical models constrained by experimental and geological data. Simultaneously, efficient computational methods must be developed to model these processes. My work encompasses both of these efforts.

Links to several areas of recent interest:

supershear rupture dynamics

thermal weakening mechanisms

poroelastic effects

Publications

Work in Progress (Abstracts, Talks, and Posters from Recent Meetings)

Codes

Curriculum Vitae

Applied Mathematics 202: Physical Mathematics II (spring 2008)