Tidal walking has been proposed as a mechanism inducing lateral offset on preexisting strike‐slip faults on Europa by tidal forcing. We test this hypothesis numerically by modeling a part of Europa's ice shell with an embedded strike‐slip fault. Our model involves two coupled processes: (i) slip at the fault and deformation of the ice shell on the tidal timescale and (ii) thermal evolution of the ice shell on the timescale of tens of thousands of years. The fault is characterized by the Mohr‐Coulomb criterion allowing to determine self‐consistently the activation depth of the fault. On the tidal timescale, the ice shell is described by the Maxwell viscoelasticity; on the convection timescale, the ice is treated as a non‐Newtonian viscous fluid. We show that tidal walking is capable of producing surface lateral offset of the order of kilometers over 100 thousand years provided that the active part of the fault penetrates the high‐viscosity part of the shell. Such conditions are likely not met for the current amplitude of the tidal forcing and for the estimated ice shell thickness. We show that either larger forcing amplitude (e.g., due to higher eccentricity of the moon) or partial flooding of the fault zone by water from the ocean is required to produce the observed offset. We demonstrate that thermo‐mechanical coupling can significantly enhance the efficiency of tidal walking and we investigate conditions for which the fault's activity can result in observable surface thermal signatures.

中文翻译：

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欧罗巴走滑断层的潮汐行走-来自数值模型的洞察力

潮汐行走已被提出为一种通过潮汐强迫在欧罗巴上已存在的走滑断层上引起横向偏移的机制。我们通过对带有嵌入式走滑断层的欧罗巴冰壳进行建模，以数值方式验证了这一假设。我们的模型涉及两个耦合过程：（i）潮汐时标上的断层滑动和冰壳的变形，以及（ii）数万年时标上的冰壳的热演化。断层的特征是通过Mohr-Coulomb准则来确定断层的活动深度。在潮汐时间尺度上，冰壳由麦克斯韦粘弹性来描述。在对流时间尺度上，冰被视为非牛顿粘性流体。我们表明，只要断层的活动部分穿透壳层的高粘度部分，潮汐行走就能在十万年的时间内产生数千米的表面横向偏移。对于当前的潮汐强迫幅度和估计的冰壳厚度，可能无法满足这些条件。我们表明，需要更大的强迫振幅（例如，由于更高的月球偏心率）或来自海洋的水对断层带的部分淹没，才能产生观测到的偏移量。我们证明了热力耦合可以显着提高潮汐行走的效率，并且我们研究了断层活动可能导致可观察到的表面热信号的条件。