James R. Rice

Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics

B.S., 1962, Engineering Mechanics, Lehigh University
M.S., 1963, Ph.D., 1964, Applied Mechanics, Lehigh University
View Publications

Mechanics and physics of earth and environmental processes

Professor Rice addresses the mechanics and physics of earth and environmental processes. That involves theoretical solid and fluid mechanics for stressing, deformation, fracture and flow problems as they arise in seismology, tectonophysics and surficial geologic processes, and in geomechanical and hydrological aspects of civil and environmental engineering.

In his work on earthquakes, he has addressed rupture nucleation in relation to laboratory fault friction properties, dynamic slip propagation, and stressing and seismicity in the lithosphere, and has developed models of earthquake sequences and interactions along faults. That work has addressed continental strike-slip zones, particularly the San Andreas fault, and subduction zones worldwide. Also, he has developed the theory of poroelastic and other effects in fluid-infiltrated earth materials, with applications in geophysics and geotechnology, and has contributed to the theory of deformation localization into shear zones, the constitutive representation and stability analysis of frictional slip, and the modeling of landslides. His work on engineering mechanics and materials physics has addressed the theory of stress fields near crack tips and crack propagation, especially in elastic-plastic metals, brittle cracking along interfaces between dissimilar materials, conservation integral metodology in fracture theory, the structure of inelastic constitutive relations for ductile crystals and polycrystals, microscopic mechanisms of cleavage and dislocation generation at crack tips, ductile rupture by plastic hole growth, creep failures by diffusive cavitation, and the thermodynamics of interfacial embrittlement by solute segregation. As part of his work, he has contributed to techniques of finite-element computational mechanics for inelastic and large-strain problems, and more recently to spectral computational methods for crack and fault dynamics.

Current work in his group is on the science of earthquakes and on hydrologic processes involving fluid interactions with deformation and failure of earth materials as they arise in seismology as well as in landslides, glacial motions, fluid injections, and tsunamis. Topics include slip-rupture dynamics through branched and offset fault systems, including effects of damaged fault-border zones, physics of fault friction, thermally driven pore fluid pressurization and fault weakening in rapid slip, seismicity and transient aseismic deformations in subduction zones, tsunami generation and propagation, landslides and the transition to debris flows, meltwater penetration through glaciers, sliding processes at their beds and iceberg calving, and computational mechanics methodology for problems in some of those domains.

See Also: Research Page