Earthquake Prediction And Rock Mechanics

The evaluation of in-situ rock stress is not only important in the exploration and engineering involving rock masses for mining, hydropower, tunneling, oil and gas production, and stone quarrying, but also in the geodynamics and earthquake prediction. The methods of determining these stresses for shallow crust in the engineering practice, including

Fracture and flow of rocks under stress and their geophysical and seismological implications raise fundamental questions in rock mechanics, particularly in the areas of tectonophysics and seismology. This text exclusively addresses the deformation and fracture of rock specimens under general triaxial compression, in which all three principal stress

The evaluation of in-situ rock stress is not only important in the exploration and engineering involving rock masses for mining, hydropower, tunneling, oil and gas production, and stone quarrying, but also in the geodynamics and earthquake prediction. The methods of determining these stresses for shallow crust in the engineering practice, including hydraulic fracture method, stress relief method, and acoustic emission method, have not developed substantially to satisfy the increasing utilization of rock masses. The geophysical methods for stresses determination of deep crust only determine the stress fields of deep crust qualitatively. Contributed by a group of leading experts from engineering and geophysical community, Rock Stress and Earthquakes addresses new developments in numerical modeling and advanced measuring techniques in engineering practices, and build new connections between traditional and geophysical methods, which will both benefit earthquake prediction based on the concept of the crustal stresses. Rock Stress and Earthquakes reflects the developments in this area, covering measuring techniques, interpretation methods, and the application of in-situ stress in engineering practice and geophysics, and is of interest to academics and engineers in rock mechanics, geophysics, geology, and seismology.

This essential reference for graduate students and researchers provides a unified treatment of earthquakes and faulting as two aspects of brittle tectonics at different timescales. The intimate connection between the two is manifested in their scaling laws and populations, which evolve from fracture growth and interactions between fractures. The connection between faults and the seismicity generated is governed by the rate and state dependent friction laws - producing distinctive seismic styles of faulting and a gamut of earthquake phenomena including aftershocks, afterslip, earthquake triggering, and slow slip events. The third edition of this classic treatise presents a wealth of new topics and new observations. These include slow earthquake phenomena; friction of phyllosilicates, and at high sliding velocities; fault structures; relative roles of strong and seismogenic versus weak and creeping faults; dynamic triggering of earthquakes; oceanic earthquakes; megathrust earthquakes in subduction zones; deep earthquakes; and new observations of earthquake precursory phenomena.

Our understanding of earthquakes and faulting processes has developed significantly since publication of the successful first edition of this book in 1990. This revised edition, first published in 2002, was therefore thoroughly up-dated whilst maintaining and developing the two major themes of the first edition. The first of these themes is the connection between fault and earthquake mechanics, including fault scaling laws, the nature of fault populations, and how these result from the processes of fault growth and interaction. The second major theme is the central role of the rate-state friction laws in earthquake mechanics, which provide a unifying framework within which a wide range of faulting phenomena can be interpreted. With the inclusion of two chapters explaining brittle fracture and rock friction from first principles, this book is written at a level which will appeal to graduate students and research scientists in the fields of seismology, physics, geology, geodesy and rock mechanics.