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| Effect of Poisson’s ratio on stress state in the Wenchuan MS8.0 earthquake fault |
| Zhoumin Xie1, 2, Caibo Hu1, Yongen Cai1, Chi-yuen Wang3 |
1 Department of Geophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
2 Institute of Crustal Dynamics, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100085, China
3 Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA |
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Abstract The Wenchuan MS8.0 earthquake occurred on the Longmenshan fault which inclines at a dip angle exceeding 60 degrees. Since most thrust earthquakes occur on faults with dip angles of about 30 degrees, it is enigmatic why the Wenchuan earthquake occurred on such a steep fault. In this study we use a simple finite element model to investigate how the stress state in the fault changes with the variation of Poisson’s ratio. The results show that, with the Poisson’s ratio in the fault increasing, the magnitudes of the principal stresses increase and the maximum shear stress decrease, and, especially, the angle between the maximum principal stress and the fault plane decreases, which will enhance the driving force to overcome the frictional resistance on the fault. The increase of Poisson’s ratio in the fault may be an important factor to affect the occurrence of the fault earthquakes with large angles between maximum principal stress and fault plane.
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Received: 16 October 2009
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| Fund:National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 40474013 and 40821062) and the Special Research Project in Earthquake Science, China (No. 200808068) |
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Corresponding Authors:
Yongen Cai
E-mail: yongen@pku.edu.cn
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| [1] |
Yu Wang, Shengli Ma, Toshihiko Shimamoto, Lu Yao, Jianye Chen, Xiaosong Yang, Honglin He, Jiaxiang Dang, Linfeng Hou, Tetsuhiro Togo. Internal structures and high-velocity frictional properties of Longmenshan fault zone at Shenxigou activated during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake[J]. Earthquake Science, 2014, 27(5): 499-528. |
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