Xu Li-sheng

Advances in ground motion studies in China

This paper briefly summarizes the works in the processing of strong ground motion data, the factors affecting strong ground motion, the modeling of strong ground motion and the calculating of broad-band response spectrum which have been done recent years by engineering seismologists and seismologists of China. In addition, we think back to the international cooperation in strong ground motion of the recent years and make some expectations for the future.

Spatial and temporal rupture process of the January 26, 2001, Gujarat, India, M S=7.8 earthquake

The source parameters, such as moment tensor, focal mechanism, source time function (STF) and temporal-spatial rupture process, were obtained for the January 26, 2001, India, MS=7.8 earthquake by inverting waveform data of 27 GDSN stations with epicentral distances less than 90°. Firstly, combining the moment tensor inversion, the spatial distribution of intensity, disaster and aftershocks and the orientation of the fault where the earthquake lies, the strike, dip and rake of the seismogenic fault were determined to be 92°, 58° and 62°, respectively. That is, this earthquake was a mainly thrust faulting with the strike of near west-east and the dipping direction to south. The seismic moment released was 3.5×1020 Nm, accordingly, the moment magnitude MW was calculated to be 7.6. And then, 27 P-STFs, 22 S-STFs and the averaged STFs of them were determined respectively using the technique of spectra division in frequency domain and the synthetic seismogram as Green’s functions. The analysis of the STFs suggested that the earthquake was a continuous event with the duration time of 19 s, starting rapidly and ending slowly. Finally, the temporal-spatial distribution of the slip on the fault plane was imaged from the obtained P-STFs and S-STFs using an time domain inversion technique. The maximum slip amplitude on the fault plane was about 7 m. The maximum stress drop was 30 MPa, and the average one over the whole rupture area was 7 MPa. The rupture area was about 85 km long in the strike direction and about 60 km wide in the down-dip direction, which, equally, was 51 km deep in the depth direction. The rupture propagated 50 km eastwards and 35 km westwards. The main portion of the rupture area, which has the slip amplitude greater than 0.5 m, was of the shape of an ellipse, its major axis oriented in the slip direction of the fault, which indicated that the rupture propagation direction was in accordance with the fault slip direction. This phenomenon is popular for strike-slip faulting, but rather rare for thrust faulting. The eastern portion of the rupture area above the initiation point was larger than the western portion below the initiation point, which was indicative of the asymmetrical rupture. In other words, the rupturing was kind of unilateral from west to east and from down to up. From the snapshots of the slip-rate variation with time and space, the slip rate reached the largest at the 4th second, that was 0.2 m/s, and the rupture in this period occurred only around the initiation point. At the 6th second, the rupture around the initiation point nearly stopped, and started moving outwards. The velocity of the westward rupture was smaller than that of the eastward rupture. Such rupture behavior like a circle mostly stopped near the 15th second. After the 16th second, only some patches of rupture distributed in the outer region. From the snapshots of the slip variation with time and space, the rupture started at the initiation point and propagated outwards. The main rupture on the area with the slip amplitude greater than 5 m extended unilaterally from west to east and from down to up between the 6th and the 10th seconds, and the western segment extended a bit westwards and downwards between the 11th and the 13th seconds. The whole process lasted about 19 s. The rupture velocity over the whole rupture process was estimated to be 3.3 km/s.

Mechanism of the June 4, 2000 Southern Sumatra, Indonesia, earthquake*

Mechanism of the June 4, 2000 southern Sumatra, Indonesia, earthquake (MS=8.0) are estimated from teleseismic body waves recorded by long period seismograph stations of the global seismic network. This solution is more reasonable than those reported by USGS, Harvard CMT and ERI of University of Tokyo. The best double-couple component of this earthquake is 1.5×1021 Nm, the compensated linear vector dipole component is 1.2×1020 Nm, and the explosion component is −5.9×1019 Nm. The focal mechanism is mainly left-lateral strike-slip, with a small thrust component. Nodal plane I: The strike is 199°, the dip, 82°, and the rake, 5°; Nodal plane II: The strike is 109°, the dip, 85°, and the rake, 172°. P axis: The azimuth is 154° and the plunge, 2°; T axis: The azimuth is 64° and the plunge, 10°; B axis: The azimuth is 256° and the plunge, 80°. The P-waveforms recorded at different stations show prominent directivity. The directivity shows that the Nodal plane I is the fault plane, and that the earthquake ruptured unilaterally from the northeast to the southwest, nearly perpendicular to the strike of the Java trench.