Tectonic stress and the source mechanism of the Imperial Valley, California, earthquake of 1940

1972 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1283-1302 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Trifunac
Keyword(s):  
Stress Drop ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
Strong Motion ◽  
Tectonic Stress ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Imperial Valley ◽  
Multiple Sequence ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Instrumental Records

Abstract The Imperial Valley earthquake was a multiple sequence (Trifunac and Brune, 1970) with at least four events occurring during the main energy release. These four events, recorded on the strong-motion seismograph in El Centro, located about 10 km NW from the instrumentally determined epicenter, and nine aftershocks recorded in the next 5 min are re-examined in this paper to test an approximate source theory (Brune, 1970). This theory predicts the shape of the body-wave spectra in terms of the seismic moment and stress drop. By fitting theoretical spectra to the spectra calculated from the strong-motion accelerogram, moment and stress drop can be estimated for each of the multiple events. Inasmuch as the average displacements at the fault and the source dimensions can be derived from the known moment and stress drop, the pattern of average displacements along the fault was computed from the instrumental records. A test of the theory, then, consists of comparing the fault displacements derived from seismograms with the fault displacements observed at the surface (Buwalda, unpublished field notes). For the Imperial Valley earthquake, agreement between these two independent methods of measurement is good, suggesting that the above theory is an adequate first approximation for the spectra of body waves. The stress drop variations along the fault, inferred also from the above theory, indicate two areas of major stress concentration located near the northwestern and southeastern ends of the dislocation. The stress drops for various events varied from about ten to several hundred bars.

scholarly journals The source mechanism of the August 7, 1966 El Golfo earthquake

1978 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 1281-1292
Author(s):  
John E. Ebel ◽  
L. J. Burdick ◽  
Gordon S. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Surface Wave ◽  
Stress Drop ◽  
Gulf Of California ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
Source Parameters ◽  
High Stress ◽  
Plate Boundary ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Wave Radiation

abstract The El Golfo earthquake of August 7, 1966 (mb = 6.3, MS = 6.3) occurred near the mouth of the Colorado River at the northern end of the Gulf of California. Synthetic seismograms for this event were computed for both the body waves and the surface waves to determine the source parameters of the earthquake. The body-wave model indicated the source was a right lateral, strike-slip source with a depth of 10 km and a far-field time function 4 sec in duration. The body-wave moment was computed to be 5.0 × 1025 dyne-cm. The surface-wave radiation pattern was found to be consistent with that of the body waves with a surface-wave moment of 6.5 × 1025 dyne-cm. The agreement of the two different moments indicates that the earthquake had a simple source about 4 sec long. A comparison of this earthquake source with the Borrego Mountain and Truckee events demonstrates that all three of these earthquakes behaved as high stress-drop events. El Golfo was shown to be different from the low stress-drop, plate-boundary events which were located on the Gibbs fracture zone in 1967 and 1974.

A dynamic model for far-field acceleration

1982 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 1049-1068
Author(s):  
John Boatwright
Keyword(s):  
Stress Drop ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Dynamic Stress ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Far Field ◽  
Rupture Velocity ◽  
Frequency Level ◽  
Average Change ◽  
Dynamic Stress Drop

abstract A model for the far-field acceleration radiated by an incoherent rupture is constructed by combining Madariaga's (1977) theory for the high-frequency radiation from crack models of faulting with a simple statistical source model. By extending Madariaga's results to acceleration pulses with finite durations, the peak acceleration of a pulse radiated by a single stop or start of a crack tip is shown to depend on the dynamic stress drop of the subevent, the total change in rupture velocity, and the ratio of the subevent radius to the acceleration pulse width. An incoherent rupture is approximated by a sample from a self-similar distribution of coherent subevents. Assuming the subevents fit together without overlapping, the high-frequency level of the acceleration spectra depends linearly on the rms dynamic stress drop, the average change in rupture velocity, and the square root of the overall rupture area. The high-frequency level is independent, to first order, of the rupture complexity. Following Hanks (1979), simple approximations are derived for the relation between the rms dynamic stress drop and the rms acceleration, averaged over the pulse duration. This relation necessarily depends on the shape of the body-wave spectra. The body waves radiated by 10 small earthquakes near Monticello Dam, South Carolina, are analyzed to test these results. The average change of rupture velocity of Δv = 0.8β associated with the radiation of the acceleration pulses is estimated by comparing the rms acceleration contained in the P waves to that in the S waves. The rms dynamic stress drops of the 10 events, estimated from the rms accelerations, range from 0.4 to 1.9 bars and are strongly correlated with estimates of the apparent stress.

Nonlinear traveltime inversion scheme for crosshole seismic tomography in tilted transversely isotropic media

Geophysics ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. D17-D33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bing Zhou ◽  
Stewart Greenhalgh ◽  
Alan Green
Keyword(s):  
Seismic Tomography ◽  
Velocity Structure ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
Transversely Isotropic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Inversion Method ◽  
Perturbation Equation ◽  
Transversely Isotropic Media ◽  
Isotropic Media

Crosshole seismic tomography often is applied to image the velocity structure of an interwell medium. If the rocks are anisotropic, the tomographic technique must be adapted to the complex situation; otherwise, it leads to a false interpretation. We propose a nonlinear kinematic inversion method for crosshole seismic tomography in composite transversely isotropic media with known dipping symmetry axes. This method is based on a new version of the first-order traveltime perturbation equation. It directly uses the derivative of the phase velocity rather than the eigenvectors of the body-wave modes to overcome the singularity problem for application to the two quasi-shear waves. We applied an iterative nonlinear solver incorporating our kinematic ray-tracing scheme and directly compute the Jacobian matrix in an arbitrary reference medium. This reconstructs the five elastic moduli or Thomsen parameters from the first-arrival traveltimes of the three seismic body waves (qP, qSV, qSH) in strongly and weakly anisotropic media. We conducted three synthetic experiments that involve determining anisotropic parameters for a homogeneous rock, reconstructing a fault embedded in a strongly anisotropic background, and imaging a complicated four-layer model containing a small channel and a buried dipping interface. We compared results of our nonlinear inversion method with isotropic tomography and the traditional linear anisotropic inversion scheme, which showed the capability and superiority of the new scheme for crosshole tomographic imaging.

scholarly journals Aquatic vertebrate locomotion: wakes from body waves

1999 ◽  
Vol 202 (23) ◽  
pp. 3423-3430 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.J. Videler ◽  
U.K. Muller ◽  
E.J. Stamhuis
Keyword(s):  
Vortex Shedding ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
Phase Relationship ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
Inflection Points ◽  
Aquatic Vertebrate ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Tail Tip

Vertebrates swimming with undulations of the body and tail have inflection points where the curvature of the body changes from concave to convex or vice versa. These inflection points travel down the body at the speed of the running wave of bending. In movements with increasing amplitudes, the body rotates around the inflection points, inducing semicircular flows in the adjacent water on both sides of the body that together form proto-vortices. Like the inflection points, the proto-vortices travel towards the end of the tail. In the experiments described here, the phase relationship between the tailbeat cycle and the inflection point cycle can be used as a first approximation of the phase between the proto-vortex and the tailbeat cycle. Proto-vortices are shed at the tail as body vortices at roughly the same time as the inflection points reach the tail tip. Thus, the phase between proto-vortex shedding and tailbeat cycle determines the interaction between body and tail vortices, which are shed when the tail changes direction. The shape of the body wave is under the control of the fish and determines the position of vortex shedding relative to the mean path of motion. This, in turn, determines whether and how the body vortex interacts with the tail vortex. The shape of the wake and the contribution of the body to thrust depend on this interaction between body vortex and tail vortex. So far, we have been able to describe two types of wake. One has two vortices per tailbeat where each vortex consists of a tail vortex enhanced by a body vortex. A second, more variable, type of wake has four vortices per tailbeat: two tail vortices and two body vortices shed from the tail tip while it is moving from one extreme position to the next. The function of the second type is still enigmatic.

scholarly journals Inversion of the body waves from the Borrego Mountain earthquake to the source mechanism

1976 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 1485-1499 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Burdick ◽  
George R. Mellman
Keyword(s):  
Body Wave ◽  
High Stress ◽  
Time Function ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Polarization Angle ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Amplitude Data ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Wide Range

abstract The generalized linear inverse technique has been adapted to the problem of determining an earthquake source model from body-wave data. The technique has been successfully applied to the Borrego Mountain earthquake of April 9, 1968. Synthetic seismograms computed from the resulting model match in close detail the first 25 sec of long-period seismograms from a wide range of azimuths. The main shock source-time function has been determined by a new simultaneous short period-long period deconvolution technique as well as by the inversion technique. The duration and shape of this time function indicate that most of the body-wave energy was radiated from a surface with effective radius of only 8 km. This is much smaller than the total surface rupture length or the length of the aftershock zone. Along with the moment determination of Mo = 11.2 ×1025 dyne-cm, this radius implies a high stress drop of about 96 bars. Evidence in the amplitude data indicates that the polarization angle of shear waves is very sensitive to lateral structure.

Surface waves in structures with locally irregular boundaries

1980 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-808
Author(s):  
Anne Suteau ◽  
Louis Martel
Keyword(s):  
Surface Waves ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Additional Term ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
First Order ◽  
Irregular Region ◽  
Regular Medium ◽  
General Method

abstract The transmitted field due to surface waves incident on a local irregularity of a plane-layered medium has been studied. A perturbation method to the first order and the Born approximation can be used if the variations in the thickness of the layers are sufficiently smooth and the wavelengths are long when compared to the size of the irregularities. The spectrum of the perturbed part of the displacement field at the surface is a sum over the surface-wave modes for the regular medium, with an additional term involving the scattered body waves. Numerical computations have been performed for structures composed of a layer overlying a half-space. The contribution of the various modes to the transmitted Love or Rayleigh fields has been studied for several structures. A general method has been obtained to analyze the effect of a complex structure as the superposition of the fields due to simpler ones. When the layer thickness is kept unchanged, the incident mode is not perturbed to the first order. Synthetic seismograms, computed at stations sufficiently close to the irregular region, show how the perturbation of the signal depends on distance. A comparison has been made for Love waves with a finite element method. Both methods give very similar results when the stations are not too close to the irregularities so that the body-wave contribution is negligible. The local phase velocity shows departures from the curves for a regular model.

The partition of radiated energy between P and S waves

1984 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-376
Author(s):  
John Boatwright ◽  
Jon B. Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Wave Energy ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
Focal Mechanisms ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
P Wave ◽  
Corner Frequency ◽  
S Wave ◽  
S Waves ◽  
Radiated Energy

Abstract Seventy-three digitally recorded body waves from nine multiply recorded small earthquakes in Monticello, South Carolina, are analyzed to estimate the energy radiated in P and S waves. Assuming Qα = Qβ = 300, the body-wave spectra are corrected for attenuation in the frequency domain, and the velocity power spectra are integrated over frequency to estimate the radiated energy flux. Focal mechanisms determined for the events by fitting the observed displacement pulse areas are used to correct for the radiation patterns. Averaging the results from the nine events gives 27.3 ± 3.3 for the ratio of the S-wave energy to the P-wave energy using 0.5 〈Fi〉 as a lower bound for the radiation pattern corrections, and 23.7 ± 3.0 using no correction for the focal mechanisms. The average shift between the P-wave corner frequency and the S-wave corner frequency, 1.24 ± 0.22, gives the ratio 13.7 ± 7.3. The substantially higher values obtained from the integral technique implies that the P waves in this data set are depleted in energy relative to the S waves. Cursory inspection of the body-wave arrivals suggests that this enervation results from an anomalous site response at two of the stations. Using the ratio of the P-wave moments to the S-wave moments to correct the two integral estimates gives 16.7 and 14.4 for the ratio of the S-wave energy to the P-wave energy.

scholarly journals Teleseismic analysis of the 1980 Mammoth Lakes earthquake sequence

1982 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 1093-1109
Author(s):  
Jeffrey W. Given ◽  
Terry C. Wallace ◽  
Hiroo Kanamori
Keyword(s):  
Surface Wave ◽  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Earthquake Sequence ◽  
Local Data ◽  
Fault Plane Solutions ◽  
Principal Axes ◽  
Mammoth Lakes

abstract The source mechanisms of the three largest events of the 1980 Mammoth Lakes earthquake sequence have been determined using surface waves recorded on the global digital seismograph network and the long-period body waves recorded on the WWSSN network. Although the fault-plane solutions from local data (Cramer and Toppozada, 1980; Ryall and Ryall, 1981) suggest nearly pure left-lateral strike-slip on north-south planes, the teleseismic waveforms require a mechanism with oblique slip. The first event (25 May 1980, 16h 33m 44s) has a mechanism with a strike of N12°E, dip of 50°E, and a rake of −35°. The second event (27 May 19h 44m 51s) has a mechanism with a strike of N15°E, dip of 50°, and a slip of −11°. The third event (27 May, 14h 50m 57s) has a mechanism with a strike of N22°E, dip of 50°, and a rake of −28°. The first event is the largest and has a moment of 2.9 × 1025 dyne-cm. The second and third events have moments of 1.3 and 1.1 × 1025 dyne-cm, respectively. The body- and surface-wave moments for the first and third events agree closely while for the second event the body-wave moment (approximately 0.6 × 1025 dyne-cm) is almost a factor of 3 smaller than the surface-wave moment. The principal axes of extension of all three events is in the approximate direction of N65°E which agrees with the structural trends apparent along the eastern front of the Sierra Nevada.

A Discussion on the measurement and interpretation of changes of strain in the Earth - Derivation of rupture area and stress-drop from body wave displacement spectra and the relative material strength in deep seismic zones

1973 ◽  
Vol 274 (1239) ◽  
pp. 361-368
Keyword(s):  
Stress Drop ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
Source Parameters ◽  
Source Area ◽  
Great Depth ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Material Strength ◽  
Seismic Zone ◽  
Rupture Area ◽  
The Moment

The seismic moment and source area of an earthquake can be determined by fitting theoretical displacement amplitude spectra to observed ones. From these basic parameters the dislocation at the source and the stress-drop can be estimated. This method was tested in the case of four earthquakes for which the source parameters were known from observed surface ruptures. The uncertainty in the moment and area determinations was found to be approximately a factor of 2; for the displacement and stress-drop it was approximately a factor of 3 and 5 respectively. The application of spectral analysis of body waves to earthquakes in the deep seismic zone of Tonga-Kermadec indicate that stress-drop as well as apparent stress increase with depth and decrease again at great depth. This observation is interpreted as reflecting increasing material strength in the deep seismic zone near 450 km, with a reduction of strength at still greater depths. It is proposed that the temperature distribution in the downgoing slab of lithosphere causes this pattern.

scholarly journals Seismic Characterization of the Nevada National Security Site Using Joint Body Wave, Surface Wave, and Gravity Inversion

2019 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-126
Author(s):  
Leiph Preston ◽  
Christian Poppeliers ◽  
David J. Schodt
Keyword(s):  
Surface Wave ◽  
National Security ◽  
Surface Waves ◽  
Body Wave ◽  
Wave Dispersion ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Waves ◽  
Gravity Inversion ◽  
Surface Wave Dispersion ◽  
Near Surface

ABSTRACT As a part of the series of Source Physics Experiments (SPE) conducted on the Nevada National Security Site in southern Nevada, we have developed a local-to-regional scale seismic velocity model of the site and surrounding area. Accurate earth models are critical for modeling sources like the SPE to investigate the role of earth structure on the propagation and scattering of seismic waves. We combine seismic body waves, surface waves, and gravity data in a joint inversion procedure to solve for the optimal 3D seismic compressional and shear-wave velocity structures and earthquake locations subject to model smoothness constraints. Earthquakes, which are relocated as part of the inversion, provide P- and S-body-wave absolute and differential travel times. Active source experiments in the region augment this dataset with P-body-wave absolute times and surface-wave dispersion data. Dense ground-based gravity observations and surface-wave dispersion derived from ambient noise in the region fill in many areas where body-wave data are sparse. In general, the top 1–2 km of the surface is relatively poorly sampled by the body waves alone. However, the addition of gravity and surface waves to the body-wave dataset greatly enhances structural resolvability in the near surface. We discuss the methodology we developed for simultaneous inversion of these disparate data types and briefly describe results of the inversion in the context of previous work in the region.

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