Don,

That's the theory, but in fact there are several problems. First, even if the theory is right, it may only apply to the few meters around the nucleation point of the rupture, not the entire fault plane that breaks. Second, this process may not be operative at all. There may not be fluids present at the nucleation point, so the more mundane build-up of stress steadily might be all that is happening.

The theory you cite is call dilatancy-diffusion, and over-eager seekers of its patterns led to debacles like the Palmdale budge and the claim of time-dependent seismic velocities, which have not held up over time.

However, the failure of earthquakes to correlate with the tides suggests that the simplest case, the steady build-up of stress with tectonic loading, is not all there is, since the simplest case would result in an almost perfect tide-quake correlation.

John