Tribology is the science of interacting surfaces - the study of friction, wear, and lubrication. Geotribology of faults is the phenomena related to slip along faults, whether in an unstable (earthquake) or stable (slow creep) fashion.

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Wear along faults, i.e., gouge, is ubiquitously observed in the field.  However, the evolution of fault gouge production, i.e. wear-rate, and its evolution with respect to the slip properties and fault's strength is not well-known.

I used ‘wear-maps’ diagram, a tool to characterize wear  intensities under different mechanical conditions, to show a slip-mechanism transition from a dominant brittle to ductile mechanisms. This transition was also correlated with the appearance of shiny-smooth slip surfaces, characteristic of carbonate faults in the field.