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Power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales
Understanding the physics of earthquakes is a crucial step towards improving the prediction accuracy of earthquakes. Scale invariance or fractal features are often reported in earthquakes, such as the size distribution of earthquakes, the spatial distribution of hypocenters, and the frequency of aft...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6656799/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31341249 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-46864-8 |
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author | Meng, Fanzhen Wong, Louis Ngai Yuen Zhou, Hui |
author_facet | Meng, Fanzhen Wong, Louis Ngai Yuen Zhou, Hui |
author_sort | Meng, Fanzhen |
collection | PubMed |
description | Understanding the physics of earthquakes is a crucial step towards improving the prediction accuracy of earthquakes. Scale invariance or fractal features are often reported in earthquakes, such as the size distribution of earthquakes, the spatial distribution of hypocenters, and the frequency of aftershocks. Here we assess whether other key parameters and quantities involved in earthquakes also conform to the power law. By analyzing a large amount of data collected from the laboratory experiments and field monitoring of earthquakes, we find that the crack density on the two sides of small scale fracture or large scale fault decreases with increasing distance following the power law, and the crack number-crack length distribution is also scale invariant like natural faults. Besides, the earthquake b-value is found to decrease with increasing stress in a power law in the brittle regime of the Earth’s crust. The friction coefficient for dry fault and gouges or for partially saturated gouges decreases with the increasing effective normal stress in a power law. The stress dependency of b-value and friction coefficient is dictated by different mechanisms. Our findings will advance the understanding of earthquake physics, and will enable us to better model, predict and conduct hazard assessment of earthquakes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6656799 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-66567992019-07-29 Power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales Meng, Fanzhen Wong, Louis Ngai Yuen Zhou, Hui Sci Rep Article Understanding the physics of earthquakes is a crucial step towards improving the prediction accuracy of earthquakes. Scale invariance or fractal features are often reported in earthquakes, such as the size distribution of earthquakes, the spatial distribution of hypocenters, and the frequency of aftershocks. Here we assess whether other key parameters and quantities involved in earthquakes also conform to the power law. By analyzing a large amount of data collected from the laboratory experiments and field monitoring of earthquakes, we find that the crack density on the two sides of small scale fracture or large scale fault decreases with increasing distance following the power law, and the crack number-crack length distribution is also scale invariant like natural faults. Besides, the earthquake b-value is found to decrease with increasing stress in a power law in the brittle regime of the Earth’s crust. The friction coefficient for dry fault and gouges or for partially saturated gouges decreases with the increasing effective normal stress in a power law. The stress dependency of b-value and friction coefficient is dictated by different mechanisms. Our findings will advance the understanding of earthquake physics, and will enable us to better model, predict and conduct hazard assessment of earthquakes. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-07-24 /pmc/articles/PMC6656799/ /pubmed/31341249 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-46864-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Meng, Fanzhen Wong, Louis Ngai Yuen Zhou, Hui Power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales |
title | Power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales |
title_full | Power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales |
title_fullStr | Power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales |
title_full_unstemmed | Power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales |
title_short | Power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales |
title_sort | power law relations in earthquakes from microscopic to macroscopic scales |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6656799/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31341249 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-46864-8 |
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