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In geology, the elastic-rebound theory is an explanation for how energy is released during an earthquake. As the Earth's crust deforms, the rocks which span the opposing sides of a fault are subjected to shear stress. Slowly they deform, until their internal rigidity is exceeded.
Earthquake-cycle theory combines the stress-accumulation hypothesis and elastic-rebound theory. [1] A complete earthquake cycle can be divided into interseismic, preseismic, coseismic and postseismic periods. [1] During the interseismic period, stress accumulates on a locked fault due to plate motion. [2] In the preseismic period, this stress ...
In 1949, Hugo Benioff introduced a method for determining elastic-rebound strain increments of earthquakes on a particular fault. [5] He determined that the square root of an earthquake's energy is proportional to both the elastic rebound strain increment and the rebound displacement, and developed a way to determine whether a series of earthquakes was generated along a single fault structure.
Tectonic earthquakes occur anywhere on the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides of a fault move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the fault surface that increases the frictional resistance.
A tectonic earthquake begins by an initial rupture at a point on the fault surface, a process known as nucleation. The scale of the nucleation zone is uncertain, with some evidence, such as the rupture dimensions of the smallest earthquakes, suggesting that it is smaller than 100 m while other evidence, such as a slow component revealed by low-frequency spectra of some earthquakes, suggest ...
The focal mechanism of an earthquake describes the deformation in the source region that generates the seismic waves.In the case of a fault-related event, it refers to the orientation of the fault plane that slipped, and the slip vector and is also known as a fault-plane solution.
Types of faulting. Anderson's theory of faulting, devised by Ernest Masson Anderson in 1905, is a way of classifying geological faults by use of principal stress. [1] [2] A fault is a fracture in the surface of the Earth that occurs when rocks break under extreme stress. [3]
The equations that govern the deformation of jointed rocks are the same as those used to describe the motion of a continuum: [13] ˙ + = ˙ = = ˙: + = where (,) is the mass density, ˙ is the material time derivative of , (,) = ˙ (,) is the particle velocity, is the particle displacement, ˙ is the material time derivative of , (,) is the Cauchy stress tensor, (,) is the body force density ...