Related papers: Earthquake and Geothermal Energy
Soil liquefaction is a significant natural hazard associated with earthquakes. Some of its devastating effects include tilting and sinking of buildings and bridges, and destruction of pipelines. Conventional geotechnical engineering…
Scaling analysis reveals striking regularities in earthquake occurrence. The time between any one earthquake and that following it is random, but it is described by the same universal-probability distribution for any spatial region and…
We propose a simple theory for the ``universal'' scaling law previously reported for the distributions of waiting times between earthquakes. It is based on a largely used benchmark model of seismicity, which just assumes no difference in…
Following the observations of the self-similarity in various length scales in the roughness of the fractured solid surfaces, we propose here a new model for the earthquake. We demonstrate rigorously that the contact area distribution…
Seismic faults release the stress accumulated during tectonic movement through rapid ruptures or slow slip events. The slow slip events play a crucial role in the seismic cycle as they impact the occurrence of earthquakes. However, the…
Sunquakes observed in the form of expanding wave ripples on the surface of the Sun during solar flares represent packets of acoustic waves excited by flare impacts and traveling through the solar interior. The excitation impacts strongly…
Earthquakes and solar flares are phenomena involving huge and rapid releases of energy characterized by complex temporal occurrence. By analysing available experimental catalogs, we show that the stochastic processes underlying these…
We present a simple model of earthquakes on a pre-existing hierarchical fault network. The system self-organizes on long time scales in a stationary state with a power law Gutenberg-Richter distribution of earthquake sizes. The largest…
Natural earthquake fault systems are highly non-homogeneous. The inhomogeneities occur be- cause the earth is made of a variety of materials which hold and dissipate stress differently. In this work, we study scaling in earthquake fault…
A crucial point in the debate on feasibility of earthquake prediction is the dependence of an earthquake magnitude from past seismicity. Indeed, whilst clustering in time and space is widely accepted, much more questionable is the existence…
Earthquake faults occur in networks that have dynamical modes not displayed by single isolated faults. Using simulations of the network of strike-slip faults in southern California, we find that the physics depends critically on both the…
Catastrophes of all kinds can be roughly defined as short duration-large amplitude events following and followed by long periods of "ripening". Major earthquakes surely belong to the class of 'catastrophic' events. Because of the space-time…
The continental plates of Earth are known to drift over a geophysical timescale, and their interactions have lead to some of the most spectacular geoformations of our planet while also causing natural disasters such as earthquakes and…
The seismic waves emitted during granular flows are generated by different sources: high frequencies by inter-particle shocks and low frequencies by global motion and large scale deformation. To unravel these different mechanisms, an…
The collapse of man-made and natural structures is a complex phenomenon that has been studied for centuries. We propose a new approach to understanding catastrophic instabilities, based on the idea that they do not occur at the critical…
We investigate the sequence of great earthquakes over the past century. To examine whether the earthquake record includes temporal clustering, we identify aftershocks and remove those from the record. We focus on the recurrence time,…
We present results from a physical experiment which demonstrates that a sheared granular medium behaves in a manner analogous to earthquake activity. The device consists of an annular plate rotating over a granular medium in a stick-slip…
We study a 2D quasi-static discrete {\it crack} anti-plane model of a tectonic plate with long range elastic forces and quenched disorder. The plate is driven at its border and the load is transfered to all elements through elastic forces.…
Seismic and geodynamic studies indicate that the boundary between the Earth's liquid outer core and solid mantle is not spherical, but is likely characterized by topography in the form of inverted mountains and valleys that have typical…
We advance the novel hypothesis that water in the presence of finite localized strain within fault gouges may lead to the phase transformation of stable minerals into metastable polymorphs of higher free energy density. Under increasing…