Chapter 4 Fault movement and its impact on ground deformations and engineering structures

Abstract

Abstract In many regions around the world, engineering structures such as earth dams, buildings, pipelines, landfills, bridges, roads and railroads are often built in areas very close to strikeslip fault segments. For the safe design of these structures, earthquake and geotechnical engineers need a reliable estimate of the ground deformations that fault movements will induce at the sites of the proposed structures. The estimation of the vertical ground deformations associated with the movement of strike-slip fault segments is the focus of this proposed study. These vertical ground deformations are the result of stresses concentrated by the ends of active fault segments. In this study, the stresses and the resulting tri-dimensional vertical ground deformations that develop around moving fault segments were obtained using linear elastic fracture mechanics theory. The theoretical analysis was used to estimate the amount of vertical deformation experienced by the ground surrounding a strike-slip fault segment in China that mobilized during the 1970 Tonghai earthquake. The calculated vertical deformations and the ones measured in the field compared well.