An improved approach to simulate seismic events based on cellular automata

Abstract

Earthquake is a very complex process of geological fracture. Seismic events simulation is significant in the study on the underlying physical laws of earthquakes. Since the computation ability of regular computers is limited, traditional approaches to simulate seismic events are oversimplified without considering enough physical factors, so that the simulation results are too far from the truth. To overcome the shortcoming, an improved approach is proposed in this paper to simulate seismic events more physically, utilizing supercomputers. Material characteristics and geometrical characteristics are introduced to build a more realistic model. Taking the advantage of TianHe-2 supercomputer in Chinese National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, this approach produces simulation results with very reasonable microscopic and macroscopic behaviors. As expected, Gutenberg–Richter scaling is observed in agreement with real earthquakes. Besides, more physical details, such as the distribution of released energy in seismic events, are revealed. This approach helps to explore physical laws in seismic process and even predict earthquakes.