Physics-informed neural network reconciles Australian displacements and tectonic stresses

Abstract

Stress orientation information is invaluable to evaluate active tectonic forces within the Earth’s crust. The global dataset provided by the World Stress Map offers a rich resource of stress indicators, facilitating the calibration of mechanical models to extract complete stress and displacement fields. However, traditional inversion processes are hampered by the manual tuning of geomechanical properties and boundary conditions to reconcile simulations with observations. In this study, we introduce ML-SEISMIC (machine learning for stress estimation integrating satellite image and computational modelling), a physics-informed deep neural network approach to autonomously align stress orientation data with an elastic model. It nearly completely bypasses the need for explicit boundary condition inputs and yields comprehensive distributions of material properties, displacements, and stress tensors. Application of this methodology to Australia, coupled with precise global navigation satellite systems observations, unveils a robust and scale-independent interpolation framework. Additionally, it pinpoints regions where stress orientation reinterpretation is warranted. Our results present a streamlined yet powerful process, offering a substantial leap forward in geodynamic investigations. This approach promises to unify velocity and stress orientation observations with physical models, ushering in a new era of insights into Earth’s dynamic processes.