Ian Main

I am interested in the processes that lead up to catastrophic failure events, from earthquakes, rock fracture, and volcanic eruptions to failure of building materials and bridges, and in quantifying the resulting hazard.    Particularly interests include the population dynamics of localised brittle failure as a complex, non-linear (unreasonable) system, as well as fundamental deformation processes, fluid-rock interactions and fluid flow involving fractures in the subsurface. This now includes squashing rocks in a synchrotron, so we can image the processes leading up to catastrophic failure using x-ray 'vision', while simultaneously listening to the 'sound' generated by local brittle fracture in the rock.

Specific interests in Seismology include earthquake hazard, earthquake predictability, non-linear dynamics and statistical mechanics of earthquake sources, operational earthquake forecasting and earthquake triggering.  Specific interests in Rock Physics include fluid flow in fractured media, fracture scaling, fluid-rock interactions during deformation, coupling of mechanical, chemical and hydraulic processes, and time-dependent deformation.