Abstract

In this work we present some numerical results and visualizations obtained from parallel and distributed simulations of the Olami-Feder-Christiensen earthquake model. This model is a two-dimensional cellular automata, continuous in space and discrete in time, constructed in order to simulate earthquake activity and it was introduced as a generalization of the one-dimensional spring block model defined by Burridge-Knopoff. For this model we determine with high accuracy its exponents of the power-law behavior of the histogram of the size of earthquakes; we study the final state for several values of the parameters of the model; and we determine the path to criticality by visualizations of the site frequency histogram © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.