Source Time Function of Seismic Events at Rudna Copper Mine, Poland

Abstract

The empirical Green’s function deconvolution technique is used to retrieve the source time functions from the records of P waves of seven seismic events that occurred at the Rudna copper mine in 1996 and were located in the middle of the underground network. Their moment magnitudes ranged from 2.1 to 2.9. The records of smaller events from the same area and with similar source mechanism, with moment magnitudes ranging from 1.5 to 2.0, were accepted as empirical Green’s functions. The relative source time functions were successfully retrieved at a number of stations for six events. Directivity effects, implying unilateral rupture propagation, were observed in five cases. The azimuth of rupture propagation direction and the rupture velocity were estimated from the distribution of pulse widths and pulse maximum amplitudes as a function of the cosine of station azimuths. The rupture propagated approximately either from south to north or from north to south. The rupture velocity was low, ranging from 0.25 to 0.54 of the shear-wave velocity. The source dimensions, represented by the fault length, were also small in comparison with those estimated in the frequency domain and ranged from 80 to 250 m.