Abstract
AbstractTo determine the importance of receiver fault geometry in Coulomb stress calculations a new methodology is presented to model faults with variable geometry. Although most models use planar faults, it is known that these are inaccurate representations of faults observed in the field. The central Italian Apennines are chosen as a straightforward tectonic system with well‐exposed normal faults to investigate the effect of variable geometry. It is shown that the static Coulomb stress transfer is most sensitive to changes in strike of the receiver faults, rather than changes in dip and rake. Therefore, a novel methodology to generate strike‐variable faults composed of discrete rectangular patches is developed. Using the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake (Mw = 6.3) the calculated stress transferred to planar versus variable faults is assessed. The stress transferred to variable faults is sufficiently different when compared to planar cases to merit other earthquake sequences being reassessed with available fault geometry.
Highlights
IntroductionWhat has not been routinely included is the use of variable strikes and dips along a single fault within Coulomb modeling
Coulomb stress transfer [Harris and Simpson, 1992; Reasenberg and Simpson, 1992; King et al, 1994] is routinely calculated following large earthquakes
The fault maps in these areas [Decelles et al, 2001; U.S Geological Survey, and California Geological Survey, 2006; Basili et al, 2008] show that these surface fault traces are not straight; a planar model is an inaccurate representation of the fault geometry at depth
Summary
What has not been routinely included is the use of variable strikes and dips along a single fault within Coulomb modeling This is demonstrated in Lin and Stein [2004] for a strike-slip earthquake and two types of receiver faults, strike-slip and thrust faults, in different orientations. There are few examples of Coulomb stress transfer models using nonplanar fault geometries (some examples are Jiang et al [2013] and Bie and Ryder [2014]) These examples use a triangular mesh approach outlined in Meade [2007]. This paper presents a methodology to model variable fault strike that has been developed for rapid use within Coulomb and has been tested rigorously to ensure that the results calculated are robust
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