Trigger initiation of elastic energy relaxation in high-stress geomedium

The authors have developed and manufactured a test bench and a measurement apparatus for modeling movement of surfaces of faults with a pre-loaded granular filler in rock mass under trigger destressing. The trigger is a weak seismic wave generated by a single point-wise blow. It is found that displacement discontinuities appear under drop of force. It is shown that soft loading consumes much energy and destressing in this case results in smaller drop of forces but larger displacements. The authors find out that displacements are initiated by the destressing wave that lowers contact friction in the geomedium.