Physics, motions and prediction of earthquakes from rock mechanics perspective

Abstract

Earthquakes are known to be one of the natural disasters resulting in the huge losses of human lives as well as of properties as experienced in the recent great earthquakes. Ground motion characteristics, deformation and surface breaks of earthquakes depend upon the causative faults. Earthquakes are due to the temporary instability of earth’s crust resulting from the stress state changes. While the accumulation of stresses takes for very long period, which is called stick phase, the stress release occurs in a few seconds to 500-600 seconds and it is called the slip-phase. Physics, motions and prediction of earthquakes are generally considered as a topic of earth science. As Earth’s crust is made of rock mass, it is quite natural to expect to address this issue from the perspective of rock mechanics. This keynote attempts to provide such a unified treatise on the principles of rock mechanics.